


That Dream Within a Dream

by Eilonwy_the_white



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alpha Sam Winchester, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Dystopia, And Dean is super prickly, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Awkward Sexual Situations, Courtroom Drama, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Extremely Dubious Consent, F/M, First Time, Forced Relationship, M/M, Miscarriage (past), Non-Traditional Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Omega Dean Winchester, Omega Dean Winchester/Alpha Sam Winchester, Past Rape/Non-con, Sam's a bit of a dick at first, Slow Burn, Some Humor, Switching, Unrelated Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester, Wincest adjacent, but they both get better
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-21
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-13 05:01:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 14
Words: 51,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28897827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eilonwy_the_white/pseuds/Eilonwy_the_white
Summary: “Just like that?” Tara asked. “No question of what he was doing at the alpha’s house late at night, what he was wearing…”“With all due respect, Ms. Benchley, an omega that looks like that could be wearing burlap in the middle of the day and find himself fighting off a forced claim,” Sam said. “What time of day it was or what he was wearing doesn’t really make a difference with someone as desirable as him.”“Not even if he works as an escort?”“Omegas are forbidden from being employed as sex workers. Even if they weren’t, Privé is one of the highest class escort agencies in the state, and their ‘no sex’ clauses are iron clad. If it came out that he was selling himself or clients were offering him ‘tips’ or ‘gifts’ on the side, the company could sue them both into oblivion.”“Well then, that settles it,” Lily said with a smile. “Find out everything you can on Dean Smith. We’ll head to the precinct as soon as he’s been processed. Welcome to your first murder trial, Sam Wesson.”
Relationships: Dean Smith/Sam Wesson, Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester, Jessica Moore/Sam Winchester
Comments: 208
Kudos: 102





	1. 'Cause Every Girl Crazy 'Bout a Sharp Dressed Man

**Author's Note:**

  * For [IAnnie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/IAnnie/gifts).



> If you've read my series "We Make Our Own Future," you will recognize the premise of this story. I genuinely enjoyed this AU within the AU story arc but it wasn't the story I was telling, so I didn't flesh it out beyond a few chapters. Here it's a stand-alone, same universe, and is not Sam and Dean Winchester.
> 
> If you haven't read that series, you don't need to in order to understand what's going on here. I have changed elements from the original to make this seamless without knowing the backstory to all the referenced characters or every last detail about that universe. What you do need to know is:
> 
> 1\. That universe sucks. It is very unfair to omegas and they live under oppressive laws in most places.
> 
> 2\. Sam Wesson is Mary Campbell's son.
> 
> 3\. Dean Smith is John Winchester's son.
> 
> 4\. The general population knows about monsters, and there is a Federal Department of Hunters set up to deal with them.
> 
> This will probably be much slower than my other pieces to update. Ratings and tags will probably change.

Sam Wesson’s alarm went off at six a.m., just as it did every morning, even though it was another half hour and change before the sun would be up. Sam hated the long nights of winter in Indianapolis, needing that jolt of endorphins to get his ass moving in the morning, and groaned as he dismissed the alarm. His mom always said going to college in California had spoiled him, and he supposed that was true to some extent. Northern Cali might be considered ‘cold’ relative to other parts of California, but Sam was learning it had nothing on the Midwestern states. 

He was tempted for a few long minutes to say screw it and reset his alarm, but spring was just around the corner and after those five pounds he put on over the holiday season, he wasn’t about to skip his pre-work workout. While Sam was gifted with the typical alpha physique - tall, broad, and strong - he still liked to make an effort to keep in shape. Everything he’d earned so far was through hard work, and his body, which many a beta said would rival Adonis, was no exception. Embracing routine kept his mind sharp as well, so he made for the bathroom to take a quick wake-up shower just to tone down the alpha musk. He didn’t need to provoke another knothead into a brawl first thing in the morning by going to the gym smelling like he was looking for a fight.

Besides, there were a couple of new betas working at the Planet Fitness he’d joined six months ago, and none of them were keen on alpha posturing. Well, that wasn’t strictly true. For about a month he'd been seeing the tall, leggy blonde who'd introduced herself as Jess by pointing to the name stitched prominently over her left breast, and she sure seemed to like that he was all alpha. They’d flirted pretty heavily a couple of times on his way to the treadmills before he made a move and they were now somewhere between friends with benefits and a full-blown relationship. So, while he preferred to run through one of the local parks and feel the wind through his chestnut waves before work, he didn’t consider the gym that great of an ordeal. He grabbed his duffel bag and a protein shake and headed out of his high rise to make the cold trek three blocks to start his daily routine.

Jess was there at the front desk, all blinding white teeth and sparkling green eyes as she offered to show him the newest elliptical equipment they’d just gotten in, which would be better for his knees by far than the treadmill. The shorts she was wearing definitely weren’t appropriate for the season and couldn’t have been long enough to meet the uniform regulations, though since she was only a few inches shorter than him ( _ridiculously tall for a beta_ ), he supposed it was possible that they were, and there was just no way to cover those mile-long legs. She noticed him noticing her uniform, of course, and licked her teeth with a smile.

“You see something you like, Mr. Wesson?” she asked, flipping the question over her shoulder with her hair and adding a little more wiggle to her walk.

“I see plenty I like,” Sam growled in response. “Though I’d like it better with a whole lot less clothing in the way.”

They never made it to the elliptical room, diverting into a broom closet where Sam barely got Jess’ Smurfette and Happy Smurf underwear down before those legs were wrapped around his waist. He didn’t even mind her generic dish soap beta smell as he buried his nose in her neck and pounded little “uh”s out of her against the wall. Jess was a biter, a kink he’d discovered the first time he took her to dinner, then spread her out on his couch. It came in handy when she needed to keep quiet - like now - since she was also a bit of a screamer. By the time he was done filling up one of the condoms he always carried with him, his chest was covered in teeth marks and he was satisfied he’d gotten in a good morning workout. He also got an invitation to call her when he was done at the office so she could tell him about the new rowing machines they were getting in. It took the whole walk back to his apartment to get ready for work for his dick to calm back down.

The lead story on the AM news on the drive downtown was about the murder of one of the city’s wealthiest businessmen, Walter Dixon, at the hands of an omega - an _escort_ , no less - who was claiming self-defense under Chastity’s Law. It wasn’t difficult to tell based on the tone of the broadcaster how he felt about the case, and despite being a lawyer, Sam was hard-pressed to disagree. Even his omega mother spoke openly about Chastity’s Law being one of the worst mistakes the state of Indiana ever made since it had the potential to give every om who had an ax to grind a way to commit murder with impunity. He was just glad that most prosecutors and juries could see through it as the weak excuse it was ninety percent of the time. Sure, he knew some alphas who overstepped on occasion, but it was common knowledge that at the end of the day omegas always wanted a knot. It was instinct to them. That’s just how most of them were.

He wasn’t about to say that, though, when he worked for one of the toughest omegas on the planet. Lily Sunder was the founding partner of Sunder & Benchley, the top criminal defense law firm in the entire state. While the plan after graduating from Stanford Law had been to stay on the West Coast, Sam’s mother begged him to come back home to Kansas. Lily Sunder’s firm had offered him a generous starting package, and though Indianapolis wasn’t exactly next door to Lawrence, it was a damn sight closer than Palo Alto, appeasing his mother while still giving him the freedom to live his own life unimpeded. When he researched the offer he learned that Sunder & Benchley was a highly respected firm with branches in Boston and Atlanta. Once he’d worked his way up the ladder and gotten his mother acclimated to the idea of him living farther away, Sam could transfer out, so long as he continued to impress the higher-ups.

It hadn’t really been a problem working for an omega and a beta to date, despite alphas being above them in society’s hierarchy. Sam was good at keeping his thoughts and opinions to himself when it came to omegas in the workplace and having an omega boss in particular. He was a master at locking down his scent as well, so no one ever really knew what he was feeling. He liked to think it gave him an air of mystery, and it had certainly gotten him into the pants of more than one intern, no matter how often his father had warned him about shitting where he ate. Thus far he’d left all his partners far too satisfied to turn him into HR, and it wasn’t like he was promising them the world or anything. He made it abundantly clear that he had no interest in taking a mate, at least not until he’d made partner somewhere, and aside from Becky ( _who’d been a_ **_huge_ ** _mistake after too many cocktails at the holiday party_ ), he parted ways with all of them on good terms.

His younger brother, Adam, never failed to give him his patented sigh of disapproval whenever Sam talked about his conquests, but he didn’t really expect anything else. Adam was a beta, after all. He could easily make do with his right hand until he graduated from the University of Missouri with his boring degree in sociology and met a boring beta to mate and have boring children with. He didn’t have ambition, like Sam, and he had yet to give up the romantic notion that what his older brother really needed was an omega to help him settle. 

Sam didn’t know what the hell they taught in the sociology program at Mizzou, though he was pretty sure Adam was wasting their parents’ money. Alphas didn’t _need_ omegas, no matter what Adam thought. Sam certainly never had. And okay, sure, his parents were disgustingly happy, but that was because their personalities fit. ABO dynamics had nothing to do with it. It was just an added bonus for his dad that his mom could take a knot. Sam had never knotted anyone in his life, and he was perfectly content. Who’d want to permanently mate with one person anyway at his age? Life was a buffet, and Sam planned to sample as many dishes as he could before settling down with pot roast until death - or unbonding - they did part.

He had just gotten settled in at his desk with a cup of steaming black coffee when none other than Lily Sunder herself walked by, barking, “Whatever you’re working on, Wesson, drop it. I want you in with me.”

A tiny, animalistic part of Sam’s brain went right into the gutter at such a blatant command from such a powerful - and frankly, beautiful - omega, and his voice almost cracked as he responded, “Sure, I’ll be right there.” He was thankful he’d gotten in a workout with Jess before coming to the office, otherwise he might have a serious problem standing up. He’d never reacted to his boss that way before, which was troubling. Maybe his rut was coming on early. He’d either have to start on his suppressants or get a move on cementing his relationship with Jess for at least the next few months; not that it would be a hardship.

Lily, of course, had a corner office with two walls of windows looking out over the city’s skyline and a long cherry desk that faced the door. A leather sofa stood off to the side with matching wingback chairs in front of the desk, Lily’s executive washroom opposite. She always stood out in stark contrast to the dark colors of the room with her flaming hair and ivory skin, which Sam supposed was the point. Like any attractive omega still in her prime, she commanded attention and it was impossible to look anywhere other than at her when you entered a room.

Lily was behind her desk with Tara Benchley, the firm’s other partner, sitting in one of the chairs as they watched the flat-screen TV over the couch when Sam knocked hesitantly. Despite being a beta and a brunette, Tara didn’t fade into the background, with looks that belonged to a movie star. Sam often wondered if there was something going on between them since Lily was unmated and seemed completely disinterested in alphas, but a beta female didn’t have the kind of equipment omegas needed or the ability to scent mark. Of course, it was possible they made do with toys, and the fact he was even thinking about these things at work had Sam truly worried his rut was coming on faster than expected. Lily waved Sam in without taking her eyes off the screen, or the morning news show where they were covering what looked like a perp walk as the anchors discussed the scene.

“I don’t know about this one, Lily,” Tara was saying as Sam shambled in a few feet and tried to decide what to do with his hands. “The entire jury pool will end up tainted with the way the news is already going after him.”

“So we file a motion to move the trial somewhere else,” Lily replied sensibly. “Somewhere like Fort Wayne, a nice city with nice suburbs with a bunch of families who can relate to his situation. That’s where his kid’s from, anyway.”

“I thought he wasn’t mated.”

“He’s not. He inherited the kid when his best friends were killed. The whole family was slaughtered by vamps. She was just a baby at the time.”

“Is that how he ended up working for Privé?”

“Yep. I don’t have his full profile yet, but he was some kind of singer before that, which I doubt pays well enough for formula and diapers.”

“So why not just find himself a mate?” Sam was relieved to know that even the firm’s other partner could step in it sometimes, and Tara blushed all the way up to her dark hairline under Lily’s furious glare. “Sorry.”

“This will be pro bono, of course,” Lily said without acknowledging Tara’s misstep. Her partner knew how Lily felt about expecting an alpha to be an automatic fix to any problems an omega faced. “And I want to find a firm that will make sure he doesn’t lose his child. PCPS probably already has her.”

“Okay, defending him on the murder charge is one thing, but fighting Pup and Child Protective Services? I’m not saying I _want_ them to take his kid, but you know once they set an omega in their sights…”

“I do, Tara, but most omegas don’t look like him.” She gestured to the TV with the remote, where they were showing footage of the suspect from before he started working for the most exclusive escort agency in the tri-state area. He had, indeed, been a singer, the soundless video showing him with a guitar and a microphone, looking completely at home on stage. “A face like that, no one’s going to want to convict. Isn’t that right Sam?” For the first time, she openly acknowledged him, directing him to look at the screen as well as she asked, “Would you send that face to jail for defending himself against an alpha who didn’t respect the ‘no sex’ clause clearly outlined in Privé’s terms and conditions?”

They were replaying the perp walk that Sam hadn’t really paid attention to the first time as he turned to the television and froze, his inner wolf rising up to growl at the sight of the two officers manhandling a tall, pale man down his front walk towards their squad car. Even the split lip and bruise blossoming on his cheek couldn’t detract from the creamy skin, freckles, and full, pouty lips. His wide, terrified green eyes as he turned full towards the camera pulled at something utterly instinctive inside Sam, filling him with a need to protect that only grew more intense when a single, perfect tear slipped out of his left eye and down over his high cheekbone towards his jaw. The words ‘Suspect Dean Smith’ flashed across the screen, and it was all Sam could do not to snarl, “ _Mine_.”

“Well, Sam?” Tara said, waiting as he reluctantly pried his eyes away from the screen.

“Well?” he choked, his mouth dry and his trousers feeling a little tight. 

“Would you send that face to jail?” Lily repeated, her poker face excellent as she took in his flushed skin and slightly labored breathing.

“No,” he replied, instantly and a little too rough, clearing his throat before repeating in a more professional tone, “No, I wouldn’t.”

“Good,” Lily said with a smile. 

“Is that what you called me in here for?” he asked, hoping he didn’t sound rude, but his coffee was waiting for him and if he had to look at Dean Smith any longer he was going to need looser pants.

“Partly. Tell me the origins of and protections provided by Chastity’s Law.”

“Excuse me?”

“You had to review all major Indiana laws before we hired you here, Sam,” Tara said when Lily only lifted one manicured auburn brow at him. “We want to make sure you understand it thoroughly.”

“Uh, sure. Chastity’s Law has been on the books since 1994 and was written to allow omegas to avoid a forced claim by whatever means necessary, up to and including killing the attacking alpha. It’s a relatively broad law and is routinely invoked by an omega who has been arrested for assault, attempted murder, or murder. The law passed quickly through the legislature and was named after the then governor’s seventeen-year-old daughter, who died after jumping off a hotel balcony to escape a forcible claim. Forced claiming had not been illegal in Indiana prior to that and omegas had no right to fight back against an alpha, leaving flight as their only option. When the police were able to prove conclusively that Chastity hadn’t committed suicide, but was escaping a classmate who lured her into his hotel room and then ambushed her after prom, the governor demanded legal protections for omegas on par with beta rape. As a result, Chastity’s Law came into being, though it is often considered among the public to be the omega get-out-of-jail-free card.”

“But you don’t believe that,” Lily said smoothly, her expression unreadable. 

“No!” Sam shot back at once, glancing at the television again. “No. I mean...no. Definitely not with this Smith guy. It’s easy to see why someone would want to claim him and might not be willing to take ‘no’ for an answer.”

“Just like that?” Tara asked. “No question of what he was doing at the alpha’s house late at night, what he was wearing…”

“With all due respect, Ms. Benchley, an omega that looks like that could be wearing burlap in the middle of the day and find himself fighting off a forced claim,” Sam said. “What time of day it was or what he was wearing doesn’t really make a difference with someone as desirable as him.”

“Not even if he works as an escort?”

“Omegas are forbidden from being employed as sex workers. Even if they weren’t, Privé is one of the highest class escort agencies in the state, and their ‘no sex’ clauses are iron clad. If it came out that he was selling himself or clients were offering him ‘tips’ or ‘gifts’ on the side, the company could sue them both into oblivion.”

“Well then, that settles it,” Lily said with a smile. “Find out everything you can on Dean Smith. We’ll head to the precinct as soon as he’s been processed. Welcome to your first murder trial, Sam Wesson.”


	2. The Next Thing You Know, Boy, Oh You’re Prison Bound

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy birthday Dean Winchester! It still pains me that the show ended after only 11 seasons and we'll never know what happened after Amara brought Mary back and that British chick shot Sam...

Dean Smith woke to pounding on his front door at far too early an hour in the morning. It was a Monday, and Dean didn’t set his alarm on Mondays because Lizzie had a couple of years left before she needed to catch a school bus and he wasn’t a masochist. He’d never been a morning person even before he became a parent, and after the events of the past weekend he certainly hadn’t planned to roll out of bed until he heard his daughter milling around in her room next door. But whoever was out front sounded like they were planning to break the door down if he didn’t answer, so he threw on a tee shirt with his pajama bottoms, shoved his feet into his slippers, and stumbled out of his room.

He was stunned to find the Indianapolis Police Department on his doorstep, though he realized he probably shouldn’t be. He had a good relationship with Walter, but with the state Dean left him in on Saturday, the police were bound to get involved. Even though the goose egg on his forehead, his split lip, and bruised cheek were ample proof he didn’t start the fight, he knew the police would automatically take an alpha’s side when it came to an assault. Whatever, he’d already called his manager Charlie at Privé to let her know Walter got physical with him. She’d been as shocked as Dean was, and promised to find him new clients immediately. It would undoubtedly mean a hit to his pocketbook, but if Walter could turn on Dean after nearly two years of seeming kind and gentle, then any alpha could. It would probably be best if he didn’t have regulars anymore. Eventually they were bound to get ideas.

More confusing than the police standing outside his house was the line of cars and vans parked all along his street. Quite a few had television and radio station call letters on the side, one read, “Forensics,” and one was from Pup and Child Protective Services. That was the one that stopped Dean cold and had him bracing himself in his doorway, ready to fight however many of them he needed to in order to keep the PCPS out of his house.

“Dean Smith?” barked the ruddy, mousy haired alpha in front of him. The guy was big enough for Dean to be nervous, a good three inches taller than him and much broader, with a heavy jaw and a forehead Frankenstein would envy. A name tag above his right lapel read ‘Britton.’

“Yeah?” Dean said, as two beta women in pencil-pusher suits stepped up behind the officers flanking the lead alpha.

“Dean Smith, you are under arrest for the murder of Walter Dixon,” Britton growled, handcuffs out as he grabbed for Dean’s wrist.

“Whoa!” Dean exclaimed, twisting out of his hold and taking a step back into the safety and comfort of his living room. “Hang on a second!”

“It’ll be better for you if you come along quietly,” Britton snapped, the threat implicit in his tone. The two beta women took the opportunity to slide past the officers and into the house as Britton stepped through the threshold and filled Dean’s entire field of vision.

“I didn’t murder anyone, and _certainly_ not Walter!” Dean objected, noticing too late that the betas were splitting up, one headed towards the kitchen and the other down the hall towards the bedrooms. “Hey! You can’t just barge in here!’

“Let the PCPS do their job, Dean,” instructed a much younger, much less threatening alpha. He was just about Dean’s height, slender and blue-eyed, the kind of alpha Dean never had a problem taking down if necessary. His name tag read ‘Linus’ and Dean wondered hysterically if there was a ‘Lucy.’ “Just stay calm.”

Unfortunately, the knowledge that there were PCPS agents in his house was the last thing that would ever keep the omega calm. They worked hand in hand with Omega Protective Services to strip oms of their kids on a regular basis, and right now they were headed towards Lizzie’s room.

“You can’t go back there!” Dean shouted, ignoring the officers and hurrying after the heavy-set blonde who had already made it past the bathroom.

One could argue a rational person would stop moving at the shout of, “Taser, taser, taser!” but most rational people weren’t at threat of losing their child to the PCPS. Dean certainly couldn’t be confused with anyone rational as he grabbed for the beta moving to collect his daughter and felt two sharp pricks like bee stings, one in his left shoulder and the other above his right hip. In the next instant pain he’d never felt before rocketed through his body, freezing his muscles as he shouted and fell forward, Officer Linus stopping him from hitting the floor face first. 

The taser made a terrible repetitive clicking sound that seemed to go on forever as Dean tried to force his limbs to move and failed. There was nothing he could do to stop the agents when he heard them waking Lizzie up, or to get Officer Britton off his back when the man moved in to handcuff him. Somehow he managed not to vomit all over himself from the feeling of being pinned and the angry alpha scent filling his house as the clicking mercifully stopped and he went limp. He gasped for air the second they pulled him to his feet, his legs like jell-o and his movements barely coordinated enough for him to glance over his shoulder at the sound of his little girl crying in the bedroom.

“Lizzie, mama’s here!” he shouted desperately, his voice wobbly from the mild electrocution and growing fear.

“As I was saying,” Britton snapped while they were dragging him towards the front door. “You’re under arrest for the murder of Walter Dixon.”

“Walter’s not dead!” Dean insisted. “Lizzie!”

“You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.” Dean’s brain wasn’t able to process what was happening as they moved him out onto his front stoop and cameras started flashing in his face. “You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you. Do you understand these rights I have just read to you?”

“Yes,” Dean managed somehow.

“With these rights in mind, do you wish to speak to me?”

“I wish to invoke Chastity’s Law. And I want a lawyer.”

“Of course you do,” Britton spat, leaving Linus to put Dean in the back of a squad car.

“Please, what’s going to happen to my daughter?” Dean demanded of the slightly less hostile alpha. He wasn’t sure it would do any good, since Linus was the one with the spent taser strapped to his hip.

“Don’t worry, she’ll be safe in custody,” Linus responded before shutting the door. 

That was in no way reassuring when Dean turned to look out the back window and saw the two betas loading Lizzie into the PCPS van without her favorite stuffed elephant, Peanut. The media mob had swarmed in again and was trying to get the agents to talk to them, but they were distracted by another officer in the middle of his walkway. The guy looked like a tall, young, thin Dom Deluise, and as soon as the cameras had someone to focus on they swarmed. Dean supposed he should be glad their attention was off of his daughter, only he was far too busy trying not to cry.

Britton and Linus spent the whole ride back to the station good-cop bad-copping him, as if he’d never encountered that particular move before. Dean wasn’t sure why so many police officers had to go and be terrible clichés, but at least he was immune to the tactic from so many run-ins with law enforcement throughout the course of his adult life. Granted, this hadn’t happened in a while, not since he gave up singing for full-time parenthood. Still, he knew all the tricks cops pulled, and just because he no longer had Benny in his corner or a manager who would attest to the fact that yes, that dickhead with the broken fingers _did_ grab Dean’s ass and _was_ told no, it didn’t mean he’d forgotten how to handle himself. Besides, he had Chastity’s Law to protect him if anyone tried to get rough or grabby. The protections offered in Indiana were the main reason he and Benny moved the band from Chicago all those years ago. Dean just needed to keep it together until they gave him a chance to call a lawyer, then he’d get Lizzie back and everything would be fine.

Only everything was not fine. It became clear rather quickly that they intended to make Dean’s time as the city’s guest not only as uncomfortable as possible but to drag it out as long as they could. Initially they left him cuffed to a chair between two alphas with face tattoos who were roughly the size of city buses. He could have handled that just fine, he was used to unwanted attention, but they _really_ left him there, acting like he didn’t exist as first one man then the other began to scent him. They allowed him to get sniffed and groped until the alphas broke out into a fistfight and couldn’t be ignored any longer, after which Dean was finally dragged in for processing, which was so much worse.

The fingerprints and mugshot weren’t so terrible, despite the humiliation of being fingerprinted and having his mugshot taken when he wasn’t guilty of anything. It wasn’t like his prints weren’t on file, either, so really they just wanted to stain his fingers black like a neon sign saying, “I got hauled in by the police today!” No, the worst part, which he was sure they’d done on purpose, was the cavity search. They had no reason to do a cavity search on him when he’d obviously just rolled out of bed to answer the door, other than to make him feel violated and remind him who was in charge. 

It wasn’t like they had cause to think he’d shoved a baggie of heroin into his channel or was hiding a murder weapon up his ass, but they still had him strip down in a room with other prisoners so a female beta could lube up her latex-covered fingers and go hunting. He’d been doing all right at keeping up a brave face until then, only there was no way to hold in the giant cloud of distress that plumed off his skin when she went back a second time “just to be sure.” Dean managed to bite back a sob, swallowing it into something closer to a strangled whine, and dutifully tried to ignore the cat-calls and whistles when the woman finally withdrew her fingers and snapped the glove off into the trash.

“Put on the jumpsuit on the bench,” she ordered, collecting his clothes in a plastic bag and sealing it shut. “If you make bail you can have these back.”

“You can’t hold me,” Dean said before he even had his pants on, the first real strains of anxiety beginning to course through him. “I invoked Chastity’s Law. You can’t hold me!”

“We can do whatever we want in here, honey,” the beta replied simply before grabbing his arm to chain him to the rest of the men heading for the holding cells.

If there was one thing about Indiana law that Dean was _sure_ of, it was that Chastity’s Law meant an omega had to be released without bail. If there was anything else of which he was reasonably certain, it was that minority omegas and minority alphas were supposed to have separate facilities from the majority populations. Since the rare female alpha was a threat in a women’s prison and a rarer male omega was a sitting duck in a men’s, they were either supposed to be housed with the opposite gender ( _rarely done because that didn’t really solve the threat/sitting duck problem, it just reversed how the problem affected everyone_ ), or placed in protective custody. The Indianapolis Police Department apparently didn’t feel that particular law applied to them when they weren’t transferring Dean to jail and merely keeping him in a holding cell, and that meant he ended up locked in a small room with an alpha who was somehow even _more_ disagreeable than the two he’d been sandwiched between before. This guy had been allowed to keep his clothing ( _it looked like everyone else had but him_ ), and judging by the expensive suit and gold teeth, the odds were good he dealt drugs or was some kind of pimp. Just what Dean needed - more clichés.

“My, my, my,” were the first words out of his mouth before his licked his teeth, his body roving Dean’s six-foot-one-inch frame and settling on the gentle swell of his buttocks. “Look what I get to be bunk buddies with!”

“I’m sure this all seems really exciting, but you stay over there, I’ll stay over here, and no one needs to get their kneecaps broken, all right?” Dean said very reasonably given the day he was having. The cell was really too small for him to be stuck in with someone who smelled like boiled cabbage and rotting meat if the police expected him to keep a level head.

“That’s a smart mouth you’ve got on you,” Goldie purred, rumbling deep in his chest like Dean could possibly find him attractive in any universe. “I wonder what else that mouth can do.”

“Oh god,” Dean groaned. “You couldn’t come up with _anything_ more original than that?”

“Excuse me?”

“Do you have any idea how many times I’ve heard something about my mouth and what I should be doing with it? It’s practically the only line douchebags like you can spit out. Just once I’d like someone to come up with some kind of cheesy pick-up involving my eyelashes or my ears. Something original, you know? Not that you’d have a shot anyway. I mean, look at me, and then look at you. You _have_ seen yourself, right?” 

Dean knew running his mouth would only enrage the alpha sharing his space, but he also knew there were cameras in the holding area and his only real hope at this point of getting a solitary cell was if they couldn’t say he swung first. Goldie undoubtedly knew about the cameras and didn’t seem to care, taking the bait and flinging himself across the small room into Dean’s midsection. Dean was prepared though, using the asshole’s momentum against him to twist them around and send the guy crashing into the wall. The alpha grunted, unable to maintain his hold and getting sent to the ground by two successive hits to the jaw that split Dean’s knuckles. Instantly there were hoots and whistles from the surrounding cells, which would undoubtedly bring the guards running sooner if no one was watching the surveillance. Goldie was just getting to his knees when three officers burst into the cell, one attending to the alpha spitting blood on the floor and the other two bum-rushing the omega.

It occurred to Dean a little too late that the Indianapolis P.D. might not care that much about their surveillance cameras when a fist connected with his mouth, splitting his lip again, and a second hit blackened his eye. He made the wise decision not to fight back, of course. He didn’t need to add assaulting a police officer to the list of crimes that at the moment included murder, apparently, even though no one had told him anything yet. He could take a couple of hits anyway, it wouldn’t be the first time he’d been given a shiner, he just wasn’t expecting the hand that closed around his throat.

A few blinks cleared his vision enough to see the hand belonged to Officer Britton, who was even larger up close and personal, his scent blockers no match for the furious alpha stench rolling off of him. Dean’s body locked up for a second time, his mind freezing as well under the intense, unwelcome sense memory. At first Dean managed to get his hands up onto Britton’s chest to try to shove him off, but he quickly lost any coordination to the panic attack welling up to swallow him as the officer pushed one of his thighs between Dean’s own. Dean grunted, shoving harder, his breath ( _what little he could get of it_ ) starting to come fast and shallow as Britton forced his other thigh in until he was standing between Dean’s bowed legs. At that point, with the officer pressed flush to him chest to groin, the omega simply focused on trying not to pass out. 

Britton _had_ to know exactly what he was doing. They would have pulled Dean’s case file by now if they’d attached him to Walter, because Walter would give them his place of employment and his employee records would show his history. The way the man was pinning him couldn’t possibly be a coincidence under the circumstances. He was making a point, that Dean was as helpless now as he’d been when he was sixteen, and Dean had no hope of holding in the whimper or stopping the tears pooling along his lower lids. Britton’s eyes flashed red at him as he growled in response to Dean’s mounting panic, then just as his vision was starting to go dim at the edges the alpha was gone and Dean’s hands and knees hit the floor.

“That’s enough, Britton, you don’t need to go all caveman.” Dean was still gasping when he looked up to see the taller, thinner, younger Dom Deluise standing in front of him and glowering. “You sure aren’t that bright, are you Dean? Bring him into interrogation room five.”

Everything from the holding cell to the interrogation room was a bit of a blur, Dean not really recovering his senses until he was sitting on a hard metal chair across from the Dom Deluise knockoff and a camera on a tripod. There was no mirrored wall typically depicted in television, just a small room with pale yellow walls, one glass block window just below the ceiling, and a door with another single, narrow glass block window. The cop who had “saved” him reached down to the side of his chair and grabbed a briefcase, pulling out a brown file folder and dropping it down onto the table with a swish. Then he pulled a small tape recorder out of his pocket, setting it between them, out of Dean’s reach. Then he reached over to the camera and turned it on, every move practiced and deliberate, undoubtedly to draw out the heightening tension in the room.

“Dean, my name is Detective Steven Groves,” the cop - Detective Groves - said with extra volume and annunciation for the two recording devices. “I’m with the homicide division, and I’m here to talk to you about the murder of Walter Dixon. I understand you’ve been informed of your Miranda rights.”

“I have,” Dean rasped, his nerves still frayed from the incident in the holding cell.

“And I understand that you’ve invoked Chastity’s Law,” Grove continued, casually opening the folder in front of him. 

“I have,” Dean repeated, watching the alpha across from him smile grimly as he looked at the papers inside the folder.

“That’s smart,” he said. “I’ll give you that, it was a smart thing to do, especially under the circumstances.”

“What exactly are the circumstances? No one’s been very clear about that yet.”

“The premeditated murder over the weekend of Walter Dixon. See Dean, we have your prints all over the murder weapon, and witnesses at the restaurant where the two of you had dinner Saturday night and saw you leave with Mr. Dixon.” He slid a photo in front of Dean of a man face down on a beige carpet, a pool of dried blood under his caved-in skull. The omega couldn’t help but flinch, the color draining from his face so his freckles stood out in stark contrast. “His housekeeper arrived yesterday and found the body. The M.E. has determined he was killed sometime between very late at night on Saturday and very early in the morning on Sunday. It wasn’t difficult following the evidence right to you. It’s like you didn’t even try to cover your tracks. In addition to the prints and the witnesses, we’ve spoken to Mr. Dixon’s driver who says he dropped both of you off at his house an hour or so before midnight on Saturday, and we’ve had a look at your records with Privé. It seems Walter took up a lot of your time. So much of it that you didn’t have any other clients on your roster. That’s a bit unusual for an escort - sorry, I mean, a talent agency, isn’t it?”

“Your point?” Dean demanded, managing somehow to keep his voice from breaking as he diligently ignored the image of Walter dead on the floor.

“Walter Dixon was one of Indianapolis’ most successful businessmen. Wealthiest, too. But with your history? Your love of the spotlight? You haven’t been up to Chicago for a magazine shoot since a few months after you started ‘escorting’ Walter. Haven’t booked a singing gig either. In fact, every public photo of you now is standing next to an older, shorter, balder alpha, isn’t it? Must make it hard to share that spotlight, or to meet anyone else. According to your contract, which is good for another year, you’re barred from being assigned to other alphas who might be a better match for you, and outside of work? Well, it would have to take an alpha with some pretty big balls to want to go up against Walter Dixon.”

“Who says I want that?”

“Come on, Dean. You’re an omega. I know you had a tough go of it in the past, but you’re almost thirty now. Twenty-nine this part January, in fact. That biological clock is starting to tick, isn’t it?”

“That’s what you’re going with?” Dean knew he shouldn’t say anything, should wait until they released him ( _they **had** to, by **law**_ ) and he could contact a lawyer, but the words forced their way through his clenched teeth. “That I killed Walter to get out of my contract with him so I could find someone to make babies with?”

“It’s one of our theories.”

Dean considered spitting in his face, only the picture of Walter was still right in front of him and with the bile rising to the back of his throat, he wasn’t sure he could stop at spitting.

“I’m not saying another word without a lawyer,” he said at last, drawing a sigh out of Groves.

“If that’s what you really want. But you’re just making it harder on yourself.” When Groves finally accepted Dean was serious, he slowly turned off the tape recorder, then the camera, then at last he tucked the picture back into the file. “Guilt is a terrible thing to live with, Dean. I’ll give you some time to consider your situation in peace.”

“You’re leaving me in here?” Dean sputtered, rattling his cuffed hands when Groves made his way to the door.

“Wouldn’t want you to end up with another cell mate like the one you just had, would we?” Groves shot back, and was gone.


	3. Please Don’t Look At Me With Those Eyes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I've updated the tags a bit. The way this is heading in my outline, it's not going to be an exclusive Bottom Dean fic, so if Top Dean isn't your thing you may want to back away now. The same goes if you're into exclusive Top Sam/Bottom Sam. We're a long way off from those dynamics coming into play, but if you stick it out hopefully you'll go, "Ohhh...yeah, that makes sense" when we get there.

Sam spent all morning and most of the afternoon reading the tragic tale of Dean Smith, which started before he was even born. His mother was a lounge singer from Arizona named Mildred Baker; an omega who’d had a successful career in her own right until getting knocked up by an alpha friend who was something of a drifter. They’d never mated, though the custody laws back in the late seventies weren’t as oppressive as they’d been by the mid-eighties, so while she undoubtedly had to live with a certain stigma there hadn’t been any challenges to her rights to her son. It was enough to keep her from ever mating though, and from everything his records said, Dean had never known the alpha who sired him.

They’d lived with her parents in Scottsdale until Dean was fourteen, when first his grandfather and then his grandmother died within three months of each other. Millie had worked her way up in a local bank to branch manager by then and took a job in Columbus, Ohio, wanting a change of scenery for herself and her son after losing the only family they had. Dean had been a bright boy, always scoring at the top of his class, and the early accounts of his high school career showed great promise in both athletics and the arts. That all changed when he presented as an omega on his sixteenth birthday and was brutally attacked by some of the players on his baseball team. The story was a scandal, his name splashed all over the newspapers while his attackers’ names were kept sealed, drawings of him on the witness stand making the front page of the _Columbus Post_. He ended up pregnant but miscarried from the stress when the alphas were convicted but only given probation because they were minors, and his mother pulled him out to home school him through his final two years. He graduated with high marks and decided not to pursue further education.

Sometime after he graduated, he joined a band with, among other people, an alpha named Benny Lafitte and moved to Illinois. The band, Drunk Boy, found modest success in Chicago early on, with Dean picking up the most notice despite his designation. There were a handful of interviews with Dean and Lafitte where they were a little too chummy, in Sam’s opinion ( _not that he had one, it wasn’t like he knew Dean Smith or had any reason to envy the way Lafitte’s leg pressed against Dean’s in the videos_ ), and there was some speculation on some underground message boards that the alpha and omega were ‘a thing.’ There was never any proof of a relationship beyond a tight friendship, however, which _certainly_ did not fill Sam with a sense of relief. Once the band started getting serious attention, Dean dropped Baker and started using Smith so people wouldn’t do a search on him and immediately find out about his past. Sam couldn’t say that he blamed him.

When Lafitte mated another omega and the band broke up a few years later, Dean followed the new couple to Indiana and continued on with a solo act while they started a family. To the casual onlooker it seemed almost stalkerish, but after some digging, Sam found a _truly_ stalkerish fan page that had images of the Lafittes’ mating ceremony. Dean was in many of them, in one even dancing with Benny’s mate, Lisa, and dipping her with a giant smile on his face. Lisa was smiling back just as broadly. In another picture he and Benny were doing shots, ties off and faces red, while Lisa laughed beside them. It was clear from the pictures Dean was genuinely happy for the couple, and both Lafittes wanted him there. 

Dean’s solo singing career supported him well enough and had him traveling all over the Midwest for different gigs, even making it as far east as Philadelphia at one point. His career seemed to be ramping up and he was getting good press coverage until he found himself with a three-month-old baby to care for. Lafitte was the friend who’d been killed by the vampires, along with Lisa and their oldest child, Ben, leaving their infant daughter Elizabeth in Dean’s sole custody. Sam remembered hearing something about the attack all the way up in Fort Wayne when he’d moved to Indianapolis over the summer, as it had been particularly violent, they were a nice young family, and no one ever found the nest. Two years later the fear someone would be next still lingered in northeast Indiana. Not for the first time in his life, Sam questioned the point of the government paying so much for a Federal Department of Hunters when they couldn’t even manage to clear out a few vamps.

As Tara suspected, only after Dean became Elizabeth’s sole parent did he join Privé. Everything Sam could find only confirmed they ran strictly by the book. While some agencies like Privé tended to skirt the sex worker line as often as they could or employed betas to fill that need for clients, Privé helped provide their employees with additional income by sending them out on modeling and acting jobs as well as to hang off the arm of a rich and dateless alpha or beta for the evening. That explained why Dean looked like he belonged on the cover of a magazine. He had in fact been featured in more than one photo shoot locally and in Chicago. The agency was obviously good to him, as he had his own house in Meridian Hills, one of the best Indianapolis suburbs to raise children, and owned a very nice 2006 Audi A3 wagon that couldn’t possibly have been cheap. Getting the car in his name would have also cost a pretty penny and required a lot of extra paperwork, but he’d managed it, so yeah, it was safe to say he did well for himself at his agency.

He’d also been out on a regular basis with Walter Dixon. In fact, since signing with Privé, Dean routinely accompanied Dixon to various galas and fundraising events he attended where the alpha needed someone attractive at his side for all the photographers snapping pictures. Sam also found that he accompanied him on just as many regular Friday or Saturday night ‘dates,’ being shown in the society pages at the movies or out to dinner or a club. There were no accounts that Dean and Dixon ever had a problem before, and more than one newspaper spread showed the omega standing comfortably in the circle of Dixon’s arm while they sipped champagne or danced. It was obvious without even knowing the businessman why he would request Dean Baker. For an alpha, Dixon was laughably short, barely coming up to Dean’s nose in the pictures, slightly soft around the middle with a bit of a receding hairline, and not particularly attractive. Having read Dean’s history, it was also obvious why the omega would agree to more than one outing with Dixon. He was quite possibly the least threatening alpha Sam had ever laid eyes on.

Only something had clearly gone wrong over the weekend, because now Dean was at the city jail waiting to be interviewed, and had immediately claimed Chastity’s Law before they even got him into the police cruiser. The city P.D. practically gloated to Lily about their evidence against Dean when she called to inform them Sunder & Benchley would be representing him. They’d need to find out from Dean himself the particulars of what happened before he allegedly grabbed a bookend in Dixon’s sitting room and beat the alpha to death, but it definitely seemed out of character for both of them. Though Sam had to admit, the longer he looked at the photos of Dean Smith, the less far-fetched it was that Dixon finally snapped after years of paying to court him and wanted the omega for his own. Sam also had to admit that he was almost certainly wrong about Dean using Chastity’s Law as a flimsy excuse to get out of a murder charge.

The police slow-walked Dean’s processing and getting him to the interrogation room, leaving Sam to sit on his hands for hours trying to convince himself he was only wound up while they waited for the call from the station because he’d had a second cup of coffee on a relatively empty stomach. It gave Lily and Tara plenty of time to let the public defender’s office know they’d already taken the case, so at least when Dean was finally hauled in for questioning and again demanded a lawyer they knew about it within fifteen minutes. Police in Indiana might not like Chastity’s Law, but precious few would undermine a potential murder trial by dicking around once an omega refused to answer questions without an attorney present. 

Sam and Lily had traveled together to the station in Lily’s Mercedes, Sam detailing their soon-to-be client’s personal history in the passenger seat as they waited in traffic. Tara was staying away from the initial meeting so she could spend time haggling with the D.A. and finding out exactly what they were looking to charge Dean with, Lily better equipped for initial meetings with omegas anyway. Her expression darkened when Sam was relating what happened to Dean in high school, but other than that she didn’t show any emotion, just focused on the traffic while she absorbed all the information with an occasional hum to confirm she was still listening. When they arrived at the station, she sent Sam off to meet with Dean first so she could do whatever it was she routinely did to get oms out of binds like this. Sam really wanted to go with her to see her in action, but when the founding partner of your firm told you to go sit with your client, that’s precisely what you did.

Sam hadn’t felt so underprepared for his job since joining the firm nine months ago. A typical alpha, he’d taken AP courses in high school, made it through his undergrad in three years, and come out of law school at the ripe old age of twenty-four after passing his bar exam on the first try. Moving halfway across the country straight out of college and starting in at a major firm in a city where he didn’t know anyone had thrown him, but he’d found his footing quickly enough and was rapidly becoming the go-to underling to have on cases. He’d sat in on his share of client meetings at the office so the idea of assessing Dean Smith’s state of mind and keeping him calm wasn’t exactly new to him. He still felt so wholly unprepared when he entered the interrogation room that he almost forgot how his feet worked and just stood dumbly in the doorway.

Their client was stupidly good looking. The shot of him on the news and the photos in all his records absolutely did not do him justice. The big green eyes were surrounded by a fan of feathery lashes, the freckles were cinnamon in color, and his dark blond hair shimmered with burnished gold highlights. The orange jumpsuit accentuated his broad shoulders and chest, the cuffs securing him to the table drawing attention to his hands, fingers long and delicate where they clenched and unclenched nervously around air. The vee of his jumpsuit made his neck look even longer than it was, exposing fingerprints up near his jaw that Sam was sure hadn’t been there during the perp walk. He also sported a new black eye, the split in his lip open and bleeding again, and his knuckles were badly scraped. It was all Sam could do to hold back a possessive growl as he catalogued the omega’s new injuries, though given the way his client stiffened he hadn’t done a very good job of keeping his irritation from leaking into his scent. Sam reminded himself of the blond’s background and reeled himself in quickly, though he still didn’t move from the doorway.

“This some kind of new game ya’ll are playing?” the omega asked, and good lord, his voice was as beautiful as the rest of him. “You’ve given up on good cop, bad cop, and gone straight to mute cop?”

“Uh…” Sam’s throat was suddenly very dry as he nearly tripped over his own feet getting into the room and closed the door behind him. They hadn’t done much to block Dean’s scent, but it was enough that if he breathed through his mouth he could focus. “No, sorry, I’m part of your legal team. Sam Wesson.”

He held his hand out to shake, feeling like the world’s biggest moron when Dean simply waved at him to illustrate his limited range of motion in the cuffs. Sam barked out a laugh, running fingers through his perfectly coiffed hair as he felt his face heating up with a completely inappropriate blush. Dean was obviously aware of the effect he had on people, an annoyed little smile curling up the corners of his mouth as Sam continued to stare.

“So, are you just going to stand there all day, or…?” the omega asked when it didn’t look like Sam was planning to come any farther into the room.

“Oh!” Sam exclaimed, nearly tripping over himself again as he made his way to one of the two chairs across from Dean and managed to sit without making a bigger fool of himself. “Sorry. This is going to sound stupid, I just feel like I’ve met you somewhere before.”

“Save it for the health club, pal,” Dean growled, though there was more fear underlying his tone than anger. Any other omega snapping at him like that would have had Sam growling back, but with the man across the table from him, he strangely only felt the need to soothe.

“My apologies, Mr. Smith. I’m sure you get lines like that all the time,” Sam said, and the smaller man’s shoulders relaxed just slightly from their tight line of tension. “I’m just here to keep you company until Ms. Sunder is done, then we’ll get you out of here and somewhere that we can start working on your case, all right?”

“Am I gonna get my clothes back?” Dean asked quickly, the idea of being able to finally get out of the police station cutting through some of his bravado. “I don’t want to have to wear this out of here. Orange isn’t really my color.”

“You’ll get all your things back once we’ve secured your release.”

“Any idea when that’s going to be? I need to find out where they’ve taken my daughter. Those PCPS bastards came in with the cops, and I need to get home so they’ll give her back.” Sam’s poker face clearly needed a lot of work as Dean’s expression slid from something hopeful into something worried when the alpha blanched. “What?”

“It’s nothing,” Sam lied. “I know they wanted to book you and hold you until a bond hearing, but since you’ve invoked Chastity’s Law they can’t do that. You’ll be fitted for a monitoring collar and placed under home confinement. It’s standard procedure, they’re just taking their time because it’s a high profile case. That’s the way these things work.”

“But I’ll get out of here today, right?”

“They can’t keep you past eight hours and you’ve already been here for five and a half, so yes, you’ll get out of here today.”

The omega released a deep, shuddering breath and laid his hands flat on the tabletop, which was the first time Sam noticed he was trembling. Now that there was an end in sight, it seemed like his facade was starting to crumble, nervous little tics bubbling to the surface. His knee started bouncing, he picked at a hangnail, and he kept swallowing as he looked away from Sam with shiny eyes. It pained something deep inside the alpha to watch the man sitting across from him hunch down so he could reach his face to wipe away the tears that were starting to fall.

“Sorry,” Dean said with a little self-deprecating laugh. “This must be a nightmare for you, sitting with an emotional om who can’t even keep his shit together for five minutes.”

“You’ve had a really rough day,” Sam murmured, not knowing where that calming voice he was using was coming from.

“Yeah.”

Lily appeared just in time to stop Sam from taking Dean’s hands in his, snarling about paperwork and stall tactics before announcing that they’d be releasing Dean within the hour and he was not to say a word to anyone in the interim. That wasn’t a hard sell for the younger omega, for whom, it seemed, this was all becoming very real. Once Lily joined them, whatever remaining pretense Dean had of being a tough guy simply melted away, and within a few minutes, Lily had her arms around his shaking shoulders as she caressed his back and promised they were going to do everything to get the charges against him dropped. Sam decided he definitely must be nearing his rut with how badly he wished _he_ was the one soothing their client instead of his boss.

“I know how scary this whole thing is, but you did the right thing,” Lily assured him as he finally started to calm down. “The police know how much power they have over omegas and they never hesitate to flex their muscles, so this probably won’t be the last time they try to rattle you. The important thing to remember is to _never_ say anything to them without me or Sam or my partner Tara present. They’ll try to scare you and intimidate you into confessing if they get you alone. They’re legally allowed to lie to you if they think it will get the answer they want out of you. I’m sure they’ll threaten to get the OPS involved if you refuse to cooperate, but they can’t do that.”

“How can you be so sure?” Dean choked, wiping his face on the shoulders of his jumpsuit. His wrists were starting to turn red from the handcuffs, and Sam had to suppress a growl. “I’m unmated with a kid.”

“She’s not your kid,” Sam said flatly, immediately correcting himself when two sets of angry gold eyes flashed in his direction. “That’s not what I meant. Of _course_ she’s yours, but she’s adopted, not illegitimate. There’s no alpha who’s going to come to claim her and land you on their radar. Omega Protective Services can’t come after you for having a child left in your custody by her parents.”

“I work as a fucking escort,” Dean scoffed. It nearly made Sam squirm at how pretty his mouth still looked when he swore.

“At an _entirely_ legitimate agency,” Lily told him. “If the OPS went after every om who worked as an escort, Privé would be out of business within a few days.”

“Okay.”

Dean twisted his hands again, the cuffs digging even deeper into his wrists, and Sam couldn’t take it anymore. His distressed scent was building in the small room, hints of peach cobbler and ginger sending Sam’s inner wolf into overdrive, and he needed to get out before something embarrassing happened like popping a knot in his dress slacks. That would get him kicked off the case faster than just about anything else, and after only a few minutes in Dean Smith’s presence he wasn’t sure if he could survive not working closely with the omega without copious amounts of alcohol. 

“I’m going to see if I can get someone to undo those cuffs,” he said like the reasonable, responsible lawyer he was, holding his breath until he was out of the room. Dean’s scent was clinging to his clothes, making his head spin, and he had to run through the history of tax law to convince his dick to calm down. Whatever reaction he was having to Dean Smith was entirely inappropriate and he needed to get a handle on it quickly. He’d just have to call Jess once he got out of work and see if she could help him fuck his head on straight.


	4. Should Have All Worked Out But it Didn’t

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From here on out I *think* updates will be Mondays and Thursdays, depending on how this flows. It's flowing pretty steadily at the moment.

Despite Lily’s best efforts, it was an hour and a half before Dean was released into their custody after they’d ‘misplaced’ his personal items and snapped the electronic monitoring collar around his neck. It worked just like an ankle monitoring bracelet, only with an added level of humiliation because it was so visible. Dean couldn’t travel outside a one-mile radius of his house, which, since he lived in the suburbs, cut him off from just about everything essential a human being needed to survive. There were no grocery stores nearby, no pharmacies, no banks, not even a dollar store where he could walk to get toilet paper. The police placed a tracking app on both Lily and Sam’s phones and instructed them to send Tara in at her earliest convenience, since they were Dean’s lawyers and not only did they have to notify the precinct if he needed to travel farther than the collar allowed, but one of them needed to be with him at all times should such an event occur.

As Sam sat with Dean to make sure no other officers tried to come in and coerce a confession, it began to settle in just how thoroughly screwed their pretty, pretty client was. The entirety of Dean’s life had been upended without even needing a trial just by being arrested and accused of murder, and they hadn’t even broken the really bad news to him yet. They wanted to get him out of the police station before explaining that the PCPS had fast tracked his daughter’s case and placed Lizzie in protective foster care, which meant no visitation or right to know who had her. Furthermore, Dean’s face, name, and neighborhood had been splashed all over the news, convicting him in the court of public opinion before he’d even been interviewed by the police. His car had been impounded until further notice, and there wasn’t even a question of whether or not he’d lost his job. Even if they could get the charges dropped, Dean Smith's life in Indianapolis ( _possibly the entire state_ ) was over.

“I’ve got you two rooms at the Conrad right downtown,” Lily explained as she led the way towards the back of the station where she’d parked her Mercedes, Dean sandwiched between her and Sam, when the police finally stopped their pissing match and let him go. “It’s about nine miles away from your house, but I got an emergency extension to allow you to exceed the limit up to a ten mile radius as long as Sam is within one hundred feet of you.”

“The Conrad?” Sam asked, not wanting to make a scene in front of their client about suddenly having to babysit him. He understood that one of them needed to be with him, he just didn’t know why he drew the short straw when Dean was clearly much more comfortable with Lily.

“You’re sending me to a hotel with him?” Dean demanded, sounding more than a little panicked about the idea. It gave Sam a smug sense of relief to know his instincts were right on the money when it came to Dean’s comfort level.

“Your rooms are side-by-side,” Lily replied evenly, stopping at the door to give Dean’s arm a squeeze. “But _not_ adjoining. Not that Sam would ever try anything. He’s a professional. You can’t go back to your house yet, the forensics unit isn’t done with it so it’s cordoned off. And they can’t force you to sleep on the street, much as they might like to try. It should only be a few days until they let you back in, most of the evidence they need for a murder charge was at Walter’s house.”

“That’s not actually reassuring,” Dean told her, his voice cracking as he balled his hands into fists and tried to keep his breathing slow and even.

She squeezed his arm again.

“I know. But try not to worry about it. You’re in good hands with us. Now, you’re going to want to brace yourself. I’ve tried to keep our involvement in this case as quiet as possible because we’re a very high profile firm, but I _am_ expecting there to be some reporters between us and the car. Once we’ve got a strategy set we can start using them to our advantage to reshape your image with the public. Right now we just need to get you past them. Are you ready?”

“Not really, but my only other option is staying here, so…”

The omega did his best to smile, but it wasn’t very convincing when he was white as a sheet. Sam couldn’t blame him after having read about the circus surrounding the rape trial when he was just a kid. He realized this was probably bringing back some very unpleasant memories and quickly slipped out of his jacket to place it over Dean’s shoulders.

“Here,” he said as the shorter man flinched like he’d been jabbed with a hot poker. "They don’t need more pictures of you in your pajamas. Popping the collar should hide the monitor, too.”

“Thanks,” Dean muttered, sliding his arms into the sleeves and then pushing the cuffs up so he could actually use his hands to flip up the collar as Sam suggested. Even though Dean was unusually tall for an omega, Sam’s jacket dwarfed him, and the alpha struggled desperately to convince himself he didn’t like it.

“That reminds me,” Lily said. “On the way there you can give me a list of your sizes and I’ll have one of the assistants run and get you some clothes. You’ll be near enough to the Circle Center Mall they can grab you the basics at least.”

“You don’t have to do that…”

“No, I don’t. I want to. You shouldn’t have to spend days in the same underwear and pajamas for daring to defend yourself.”

Sam didn’t have time to try to reconcile the soft, gentle Lily Sunder in front of him with the barracuda he worked for on a daily basis before she pushed the door open and they were mobbed. It quickly became apparent that he was there for muscle as well as babysitting when they stepped out onto the back stoop and half the reporters in the city were swarming them like locusts and shoving microphones in their faces. Sam supposed it was foolish to have thought they’d escaped media scrutiny just because there wasn’t anyone with a camera ambushing them when they arrived at the station. For all their force of personality, neither of the partners of Sunder & Benchley was built like a running back, and though their client wasn’t exactly small, Sam made a much more effective wall so all three of them could get to Lily’s car and slip inside.

Sam was demoted to the back seat so Lily could talk quietly with Dean on the way to the hotel about what he could expect and how to proceed in the coming days. Tara was planning to meet them in the lobby, where she'd give them an update on his daughter. That was, perhaps, not the gentlest way to tell him the girl was in state custody, that the PCPS’ petition to remove her from Dean’s care had been pushed through before he was even notified or could arrange for a lawyer, and that this kind of decree was very difficult to fight with an active murder charge against him. Sam found yet another reason why his bosses pulled him in on this case when omega distress flooded the car's interior and it was instictive to send out waves of soothing pheromones.

“What are you saying?” Dean asked when he felt like he could keep his voice relatively even. The scent coming from the back seat was incredibly calming, which just made him all the more upset. He didn’t _need_ an alpha to get his shit together and had to stop himself from growling over his shoulder at the puppy dog scrunched up behind Lily’s seat. “Are you saying I’m not going to be able to get her back?”

“No, I’m letting you know it will be a hard road to getting her back,” Lily said smoothly. “Not impossible, but not easy. And it might take a long time.”

“I don’t care how long it takes! She’s my child! I’m not just going to let them _take_ her!” The next plume of pheromones was really too much for him, and he did finally whip around in the passenger seat to snap, “Would you _stop_ that?!”

“Stop what?” Sam asked. He honestly looked confused.

“With the pheromones! I can get myself under control without all the...citrus and cedar smell you’re flooding the car with! It’s like someone stuck a fruit section in a hope chest!”

For a moment Sam didn’t do anything more than blink at him, then he finally said, “I’m...sorry?”

“You _should_ be!” Dean barked, the force of his declaration somewhat undermined by the way his chin wobbled.

“I want you to stay near the doors with Sam and Tara when we get to the hotel,” Lily instructed as she handed Dean a pair of sunglasses as if nothing else was happening. Sam would have needed to be blind to miss the way Dean’s hands shook like a leaf, and he could hear his inner wolf whine in response. “Put those on, we need to cover up your black eye. Sam, do your best to block him from view from the front desk while I get the room keys. The Conrad is high end enough that we should be able to rely on their discretion, but there’s no guarantee someone won’t tip off the media that Dean’s there.”

Neither man suggested she was overreacting, not after various local news shows spent the day replaying Dean’s perp walk and he was likely to be the top story that night. Inside of ten minutes they were pulling up in front of the Conrad right next to the convention center in downtown Indianapolis. It didn’t seem like the logical place to Sam to put Dean if they were trying to avoid attracting attention, what with all the foot traffic, but then again no one would suspect an alleged murderer of staying in one of the best hotels the city had to offer. Of course, it had valet parking, which caused a bit of an issue as Lily handed off the keys and Dean ended up by himself on the sidewalk for a few seconds before Sam made it around the back of the car to stand with him. It looked like he might panic when a couple walked past and did a double take, clearly trying to determine if they’d seen him somewhere before. Sam’s efforts to deter them didn’t help at all when he threw his arm around Dean’s ribs to hug him to his side and planted a kiss on the crown of his head. His hair was remarkably soft for someone stuck in jail all day.

“Hands off, sasquatch,” Dean spat through gritted teeth as Sam moved them quickly through the front doors.

“Sorry, just trying to make us look like a couple so they stop staring,” Sam replied with a smile, keeping his arm tight around Dean’s waist until they were far enough into the lobby he could be sure they weren’t followed.

“Well, we’re _not_ a couple!”

Before Dean could shove him off as violently as he was trying to, Tara was there and Sam let go all on his own. With the two of them surrounding him, he may as well have been invisible to the other guests, and Lily breezed past to give the corporate credit card to the front desk. She was back shortly with key cards for both Sam and Dean, then they headed as a group up the art deco staircase with the electric candelabras, Dean again sandwiched between them and largely blocked from view.

Their rooms were on the tenth floor, side-by-side with king beds, overlooking the city. Sam didn’t want to ask how much they cost, and felt incredibly stupid for having been upset at all for having to stay there. Dean was clearly uncomfortable with the luxury, though there was nothing to be done about it now as Lily steered them all into Dean’s room to finally conduct _their_ interview. There was a small seating area past the bed with a loveseat, a desk, and an armchair, and while Sam worried it might make their client feel claustrophobic, Lily had no such qualms. She gestured for Tara to take the desk chair, closest to the loveseat, and for Sam to take the armchair, then walked Dean over to sit him down next to her. There was already a copper tray on the glass coffee table with crystal tumblers and water bottles, and she poured a glass to hand to the other omega with the most serious look she’d had on her face all day.

“Dean, I’ve taken your case without knowing anything about it because I usually have excellent instincts about people,” she said firmly as he took a sip and then set the glass down in front of him. “I’m hoping you aren’t going to prove me wrong this time, but that’s always a risk when you’re a defense attorney. So, why don’t we go through what happened with Dixon Saturday night so we can get out of your hair for a little while and start working on how we’re going to handle your defense?”

“I don’t…” Dean's eyes glazed over a little and he looked down at where he’d clasped his hands between his knees, the line of his back tensing under Sam’s jacket. “I don’t know. I really don’t. Walter...he wasn’t _like_ that. I’d never seen him like that.”

“Like what?” Sam said, trying not to flush when a set of watery green eyes focused intensely on him.

“Cold,” Dean told him. “Angry. Aggressive. Walter was my best client. My _only_ client for a long time apart from the photo shoots for the magazines up in Chicago, and even those I haven’t had to do for a while to make ends meet. He made sure to pay top dollar every time we went out. After a while we became really good friends. I’ve been exclusive to him since about three months after I signed with the agency.”

“Really?” Lily said. “Isn’t that a bit unusual?”

“Yeah, well. Walter had certain...needs that I was able to meet so he kept me on retainer.”

“Needs?” Sam echoed, an irrational flood of jealousy sweeping over him that he squelched quickly before it leaked into the air.

“Such as?” Tara prompted when Dean’s face turned a lovely shade of pink. “Dean?”

“Walter wasn’t the best looking guy,” Dean said quietly. “And even with all his money, there are certain things he wouldn’t be able to provide a mate.”

“Because he worked so much?” Sam suggested if for no other reason than to hide his relief that Dixon hadn’t been angling toward matehood with their client. _Not_ that he cared either way.

“Among other things,” Dean mumbled. “But he was the head of the company. He had a certain image to maintain, and I helped him maintain it, looking...you know...how I look.”

He blushed so deeply he nearly turned puce, and the lawyers collectively took pity on him, Lily asking, “So what happened between you Saturday?”

“He had a business dinner with a Japanese client - real big shot. Comes over twice a year. Very traditional. Likes the whole subservient omega thing, and this time Walt wanted to have someone on his arm. I was half expecting I’d need to wear a kimono or something, that’s how traditional this guy is. And I...I noticed that he was different, at dinner. Snippier, I guess. He used his alpha voice a couple of times, and he never does that, but I just figured, because of the client, that he was putting on a show so I didn’t say anything about it. Usually, he’ll clear that kind of stuff with me so I know to play along, but I didn’t get to talk to him before like we usually do, not until he sent his car for me, and then he was closed off on the ride to the restaurant. And again, I just...I just thought he was nervous. The Japanese guy is a big deal to his business, so I didn’t push. Then after dinner, he asked if I wanted to come in for a while, and that’s not unusual when we’ve had to go to one of these events and haven’t had a chance to talk. I mean, I told you, we’re friends, and he’s...he’s really fond of Lizzie, likes to make sure she has everything she needs. Always telling me to call if she outgrows her clothes or something, but I don’t like to impose, and he knows it, so he always kind of corners me whenever we go out somewhere and I let him because I know it makes him feel like someone’s alpha even if he’s not, not really. I think he’s always kind of felt like he was never gonna have his own kids, and she’s only got me, so he could help out."

He swiped furiously at the tears on his face, his breath coming in shudders, and Lily moved closer to him on the loveseat as Sam once again felt an overwhelming urge to comfort their very prettily crying client.

“He sounds like he _was_ a good friend,” she murmured.

“He was,” Dean choked, continuing to wipe his thumbs across his overflowing eyes. “But when we got into his house, he was...different. He asked if I wanted a drink, which isn’t weird or anything, so I said sure if he had beer or somethin’. I'm not really into the hard stuff, and he said to wait for him in the sitting room and he’d be right back, and that was normal for us, you know? I didn’t think anything of it. And he’s had this weird, nerdy project where he’s been rearranging all his books in alphabetical order by author, so I was checking to see how far he’d gotten, so I could rag on him a little, the last time I came in for a drink he was only in the B’s. And I’m standing there, looking at the bookcase with my back to the door, and I hear him come in but he doesn’t say anything, so I said, ‘I thought you’d at least be through all the Dan Brown crap by now,’ and without saying a word he just...jumped me from behind and slammed me into the bookcase. And it caught me off guard, completely off guard. I’m bigger than him by a couple of inches, and I know self defense, but I wasn’t expecting it, at _all_ , and I clocked my head pretty hard when I hit the shelves…”

“The size difference wouldn’t have mattered if he was riled up,” Sam calmly offered, and Dean chuckled humorlessly.

“Oh, he was riled up,” he said. “Started talkin’ about how I was a tease, and how I belonged to him and how he was done playing nice, and that...that wasn’t Walter. It really wasn’t. I don’t know what was wrong with him, but _something_ was really wrong with him.”

“So what happened then?” Lily asked, earning a full-body shudder from their client as he scrubbed a hand through his hair.

“I got myself turned around, and I got a couple of punches in, but he just kept coming at me. Kept saying ‘Mine’ and that he was going to claim me like the bitch that I am. He hit me a couple of times, tore my shirt, and I could feel against my leg that he wasn’t...hard...cuz he had me pinned right up against the bookcase, but he was gonna bite me anyway, and I was gonna end up stuck mated to someone who wouldn’t ever...uh...finish the job, and I mean...I sat through biology class with everyone else. I _know_ what that would’ve meant for me, so I just reached out for anything I could get my hands on and I got this heavy bookend, and I hit him with it until he let me go. And then a...uh...a _really_ scary thing happened. I stepped over him and I was going to call the police, get him help, you know? But he _got up_. Half of his face looked like it was almost caved in, and one of his eyes was just...blood, but he got up and he looked at me and he said, ‘Mine’ again and he lunged at me and I just ran. I didn’t think, I ran, and I grabbed a cab and had them take me home, and I got there and my babysitter saw that I was all bloody and stuff and she asked what happened, but she’s just a kid, I didn’t want to drag her into it, so I told her I got mugged and got in the shower and went to bed and spent Sunday just trying to forget the whole thing.”

“You didn’t think to call the police when you got home?” Tara said. “Or paramedics?”

“He _got up_!” Dean repeated earnestly. “Just stood right the hell up and _laughed_ at me! And then came after me again! I figured if he could do that he could call an ambulance himself! Then the cops show up this morning with an arrest warrant saying he’s dead, and my prints are all over the murder weapon, and people at the restaurant saw us leaving together. I’m telling you, something was wrong with him. It was like he didn’t have a soul, and his eyes, they were all dark, almost black.” He shivered, clutching Sam’s jacket around him as he gulped down the rest of the water, a little river running down the corner of his mouth from his tears. After a moment he looked up and said with the utmost sincerity, “If I didn’t know any better I’d swear he was possessed.”


	5. But For Me You Would Make An Exception

Dean was terribly worried he’d pushed his luck by bringing up the black eyes as all three of his lawyers fell silent, Tara writing furiously on the hotel stationery sitting on the desk. They wanted him to be honest, though, and even days later he honestly thought there was something unnatural with the way Walter acted that night. He could only hope his legal team wasn’t going to change their minds about him or decide he was mentally unstable. If they did, he had a one-way ticket to prison and he’d never get Lizzie back from the PCPS.

“Demonic possession is incredibly rare,” Tara finally declared when she’d finished taking notes. “I don’t think we’ll be using that as a defense. I doubt we’ll need it anyway, ”

“Hang on, demonic possession may be rare, but what about something else?” Sam asked, and Dean couldn’t hide his surprise at the alpha actually taking him seriously.

“What do you mean?” Tara said.

“Well, there are other things that can take a human’s form,” Sam replied. “Shapeshifters, ghouls, even angry spirits can possess people and force them to do things they normally wouldn’t. I don’t know much about it, but my grandfather has contacts at the FDH so I _do_ know enough that it’s possible there was something else at work.”

“We can call in an expert,” Tara suggested, nodding along with Sam’s line of thinking. “Someone who knows what to look for in a corpse that would point to something supernatural involved. Could you reach out to your grandfather and ask for a recommendation?”

“He and I don’t really get along. He wanted me to go into the ‘family business’ and join the FBI. I could have my mother ask him, though. That would go over better.”

“I’m not sure we should go down this path,” Lily said, her voice measured and eyes veiled as she turned from Dean to Sam. “It could get us off in the weeds pretty quickly when we already have a solid self defense case. Dean had clear physical injuries when they picked him up and paraded him in front of the cameras this morning. Everyone saw the bruised face and split lip. We should get him to a doctor tomorrow to catalogue other injuries.”

“That won’t...uh…” Dean grabbed the water bottle to pour himself another glass, his hands shaking enough that he spilled a few drops before the glass made it to his lips. “That won’t help. They roughed me up some in custody. They can just say any bruises were from that fight.”

“Who roughed you up?” Sam and Tara asked at once, the alpha begrudgingly backing down at the warning glare the beta shot his way, no matter how irate his inner wolf was at the thought of someone putting their hands on the omega.

“They stuck me in a holding cell with this guy with gold teeth,” Dean explained, wincing as his tongue darted out to moisten his lips and came in contact with the cut. “He tried to jump me and then a couple cops came in to break it up.”

“They have cameras in the holding cells,” Lily said evenly as Tara resumed her furious note taking. Sam had to marvel at her poker face. “We need copies of the tapes so we can accuse the police of tampering with evidence.”

“Evidence?” Dean asked.

“Your body, Dean. If Walter attacked you as violently as you say he did, we could have easily documented it before they assaulted you as well. You are as much of a crime scene under Chastity’s Law as Dixon’s house.”

“There’s one thing I don’t understand,” Sam mused. He expected the glare from his bosses this time. “You said Walter was going to bite you and you were going to get stuck with someone who wouldn’t ever finish the job. How did you know that?”

Dean blanched, his eyes wide and panicked, which had Lily narrowing his eyes at him as well.

“I just did,” Dean said flatly, though he didn’t sound very convincing.

“Forgive my language, but bullshit,” Sam shot back. “You also said that you met Walter’s needs, that he was never going to take a mate because there were things he couldn’t provide for them and needed to keep up appearances. But how could you possibly know he would _never_ take a mate? The man was rich! Sure, he wasn’t the hottest catch on the market, but he was rolling in dough and held a tremendous amount of power in this city. That’s pretty attractive for any beta or omega who only cares about fancy clothes and nice cars. What aren’t you telling us?”

It didn’t seem possible that Dean could turn even whiter than he already was, but he managed it as he focused on his hands again and muttered, “I signed an NDA. I’m not allowed to say anything about it. If I do, I’ll lose everything he gave me.”

“Privé’s terms and conditions expressly forbid gift giving,” Lily said coolly, the first hint of concern about their client and the foundation of their case creeping onto her face.

“They were written into the contract,” Dean explained quickly. “I didn’t ask. He _insisted_. You had to know Walter to understand him. We’re talking about my house, my car, most of my clothes…”

“If you don’t tell us everything, you’ll probably lose your daughter and your freedom,” Sam pointed out, earning a glare from both of his bosses.

“What our first-year associate means,” Lily corrected quickly, “is that whatever the NDA is for, we need to know about it before the police do. And depending on what it is, we may be able to introduce it as evidence in ways that don’t point to you violating the terms of your agreement and being sued by Mr. Dixon’s estate. Unless it isn’t pertinent to your case…”

“No,” Dean said softly. “No, it is. I just...it’s embarrassing. For him. I don’t...I don’t really want it getting out to those vultures outside the precinct. It would ruin his reputation.”

“You’re claiming protection under Chastity’s Law and you’re worried about his reputation?” Tara asked, incredulous, earning a glare from Lily as icy as the one they’d jointly directed at Sam.

“I just told you, Walt was a good guy,” Dean defended immediately, not missing the disbelief on their faces. “A really good guy. I always knew I was safe with him. He was...he was a real friend. I don’t have a lot of those. My manager, Charlie, she knew about my...uh...my past, I don’t know if you’ve looked…”

“We have,” Sam told him, watching a hand go up to rub the back of his neck. It might be a nervous tic. They’d need to break him of that before trial.

“Yeah. Well. When I started at Privé I had to fill out a form so they’d know that kind of...stuff so they could match me up with appropriate clients, and after I’d been there a little while and Charlie could see how I did on my assignments and that I could be discrete, she set me up with Walter. It was the perfect arrangement for us both. He had someone steady to appear in public with, someone attractive enough to be a trophy, and I didn’t have to worry about him trying to push for anything outside the scope of the company’s standard contract.”

“You mean sex,” Lily said plainly; no judgment, just a statement of fact.

Dean blushed an even deeper crimson and nodded, prompting Sam to ask, flabbergasted, “He didn’t want to have sex with you? With _you_?”

“Of course not,” Tara snapped. “Iron clad no sex agreements, remember? You looked it up for us. The owners of the company could retire if they took Dixon for everything he had.”

“I’m just saying!” Sam defended immediately, continuing despite the clear warning in Lily’s expression. “With all due respect, Ms. Sunder, Ms. Benchley, you’ve asked me to join this case and I’m trying to give you an alpha’s perspective here. We know if this goes to trial we probably won’t get a jury full of betas so we’ve got to consider how these claims are going to look to any alphas that are on the jury, _and_ in the media, and no alpha is going to believe that Walter Dixon did not want sex with our client. I’m not insinuating that he’d ever _acted_ on that desire, but he had to have wanted it.”

“And it does happen, clients still push for it sometimes in spite of the contract,” Dean admitted quietly, shuddering out a breath and picking his cuticles. “At Privé they get dropped real fast. But Walter, he...couldn’t. He was impotent. It…” He gestured towards his own crotch, clearing his throat. “It didn’t work. Something happened to him not long after he presented, we never talked about it in any detail, but it messed up his endocrine system. He couldn’t get it up, not even with hormone therapy or Viagra. It’s why he was so short, why his hair was thinning so young, the lack of well-defined muscle...”

“I can see why he had you sign an NDA,” Lily murmured, and he nodded, staring at his shoes.

“I know how it sounds, with what happened, like I’m some kind of idiot that he just strung along, or I must have known his dick really did work and he just wanted to make sure I couldn’t cry ‘rape’ later on, or I’m making it up as an excuse for why I was in his house so late at night, but I swear it’s the truth. Walt was broken before that night. It’s why we got along so well. We understood each other’s...issues. Even when he started in, there still wasn’t anything going on downstairs. And he had _never_ behaved that way with me, or anyone else that I ever saw. We were really good friends.”

“Okay, so we...ask for a toxicology report,” Tara said smoothly, scribbling on the stationery yet again. “His medical records. _If_ this ends up going to trial, we say we’re looking for a history of drug use. Maybe he was roofied or something. We get his condition introduced into the record and the jury will see why you _really_ had to fight him off.”

“So you don’t think you can get the charges dismissed anymore?”

“I didn’t say that, Dean. We just need to be prepared for all potential outcomes. This will really help your case.”

“As long as you didn’t burn the shirt he tore or do anything else to it,” Lily added. “We don’t want it to look like you were trying to cover anything up. That helps your claim, too.”

“No,” Dean said softly. “I left it in the laundry. The cops probably took it.”

“What color was it, so we can make sure it didn’t get ‘lost’ in evidence?” Lily asked.

“Uh...green. It was this...satin Hugo Boss shirt that was a gift after one of my modeling gigs. I didn’t wear it much because it has this pattern that looks kind of interesting from a distance but when you get up close it just says ‘Boss’ over and over again in these little square shapes. Walter liked it because it was kind of an optical illusion, but I didn’t wear it much. It was just so pretentious. I don’t need everyone knowing I have designer clothes.” 

“That’s good. That’s a very specific shirt. It will make it harder for them to pull any tricks with it. Do you remember what cab company brought you home?”

“No, just one of the city ones. I ran a couple of blocks before it picked me up and I was kinda rattled. I didn’t pay much attention.”

“If you think of it, let us know,” Tara ordered. “At the moment there’s not much else we can do because they wasted so much time cutting you loose, so we’re going to get out of your hair for the night, but Lily and I will be available by phone if you think of anything else. Tomorrow we’ll talk to the D.A., see if we can get a feel for who they’re eyeballing for the case, and start working on getting this thrown out.”

“In the meantime, you’ve got Sam next door to make sure no reporters show up with your room service, and from here on out he’ll be your connection to the outside world,” Lily said, much to both Dean and Sam’s shock. She could see the protest building in the younger omega and explained, “I’ve already told you that your movements are tightly restricted. This ten-mile radius extension will only last until they release your house, and then you’re stuck with a one-mile radius. Both Tara and I will have the ability to take you wherever you need to go, but that means we won’t be working on your case, and since I’m an omega and she’s a beta, the police can put up more of a stink. You’ll have more leeway to live a somewhat normal life with an alpha chaperone. Beyond his Stanford law degree and sparkling personality, Sam will be vital to you being able to go where you need to while we sort this out. If you need to go anywhere within a mile of your house, call Sam to go with you just to be safe. If you need groceries or prescriptions, anything at all, call Sam to pick it up for you. If you have doctor’s appointments, Sam can get a day pass from the court to take you. Understand?”

“Yeah,” the omega murmured past a clenched jaw. “Yeah, I understand.”

“Good.” She squeezed his hand, and for the first time it was clear he didn’t find it reassuring in the slightest. “We’ll get you through this, Dean. Trust us.”

Dean wanted to trust them, quite badly in fact, since they were probably his only shot of getting these charges dismissed, but it was hard to do when Lily and Tara had turned their attention entirely to the overgrown alpha who would be staying next door. He tried not to eavesdrop as they got Sam’s keys so one of his colleagues could pack him some clothes for a few days and drop his car off, joking that they wouldn’t send Becky and letting him know he wasn’t as discreet as he thought. The way the young man turned beet red and responded with a curt nod made it easy to guess that Becky was either a current girlfriend or former girlfriend, and just the idea that Sam Wesson liked dipping his penis in the company pool had Dean bristling. Not that it was his business what the wavy-haired young man with cat-slanted eyes that shifted color did with his time, but the last thing Dean wanted was to get stuck in close quarters with a player. He’d met enough of this kid’s type on the road trying to make it as a singer. He didn’t need to deal with that kind of knothead when his life was rapidly unraveling.

Then suddenly Lily and Tara were gone and he was left in the company of an overgrown alpha pup with nothing more than a departing handshake and their cell phone numbers. He didn’t even have his cell phone _on_ him, which he didn’t think to tell them before they left. It made for a particularly awkward few minutes as he and Sam stood in his boring white hotel room that probably cost a lot of money because of the view and not the décor. Walter had brought him places like this for dinner meetings, so he knew his legal team was going all out for him, and he tried to be grateful but couldn’t. Sam was filling up his space with that citrus-cedar smell again and didn’t seem to be in any hurry to leave.

“So...I’m pretty sure I’m good now,” Dean finally said when Sam continued to just stare at him and occasionally gulp.

“That’s good,” Sam said, nodding like his head was held on by rubber bands. “I’m glad. You’ve had a pretty terrible day. If there’s anything I can do for you…”

“You can leave.”

“Uh...what?”

“Leave. Please.”

For another few long, painful moments Sam went on with his staring and blinking, then seemed to register at last what Dean was saying.

“Oh!” he exclaimed, looking thoroughly chagrined. “Oh, god, yeah, I’m so sorry. I’ll get out of your hair. This is just all kind of new for me, my first murder case and all.” Sam backed towards the door, nearly tripping over the little bench at the end of the bed as Dean stayed rooted to his spot by the loveseat, before turning back to continue his verbal diarrhea. “Not that this isn’t new for you. Not the trial, you’ve been through a trial before, but the murder part of it and all of the...uh...murder stuff, and...I’ll just go now.”

“I think that’s best,” Dean said flatly as Sam turned slightly green at the realization he’d been casually rambling on about Dean’s rape case from thirteen years ago.

“Yes, sorry, just call me if you need something. I’m right next door.”

“I know.”

“Right. Of course you know. I’ll just…” Sam fumbled with the door handle, which might have been adorable if Dean didn’t want him gone already so he could stop trying to tamp down on his scent. “I’ll just go.”

“You do that.”

Sam gave a pathetic little wave as he slipped out into the hallway. The ‘thunk’ Dean heard against his door was likely the alpha’s head, since he could see the shadow of Sam’s feet underneath the door, and he had to suppress a brief flare of panic as he headed over to flip the security guard. He didn’t really think Sam or anyone else would try to break into his hotel room, but even being certain Walter hadn’t been himself, his belief that he could trust his instincts with alphas had been severely shaken.

He waited anyway until Sam’s shadow disappeared before letting out the breath he’d been holding, discovering with considerable discomfort that it left him lightheaded. Now that he was alone and safe, at least for the time being, his body was starting to protest the day’s abuse. He hoped it wouldn’t be long before Lily’s assistant swung by with the promised clothes and almost wept with joy at the sight of the thick terry cloth robe in the bathroom that came with the room. The complimentary sandalwood and vanilla body wash, shampoo, and conditioner in the shower wasn’t too bad either, and he stood under the spray for a long time with one of the fluffy washcloths sending the day’s grime swirling down the drain in a pool of white foam.

Shower stalls had always been Dean’s refuge, from the time he was a little boy getting in fistfights with kids two grades above him over his father abandoning his mother while he was still in utero, all the way through Lizzie’s adoption, where it was usually the only place he could cry over losing his two best friends without showing weakness. It offered him that solitude again as he tried desperately to forget the photo showing what Walter looked like on the floor with the giant rust-colored spot on the carpet underneath him. He’d only let himself break down briefly when he got home early Sunday morning over how stupid he’d been to let Walter get that close to him, and it had been easy to pull himself together when he thought the alpha was fine. Badly beaten, but fine. Knowing he was dead, that Dean had managed to kill the only _other_ friend he’d ever made since his life went down the toilet at sixteen, was more than anyone should be expected to take. Luckily it was a large shower and had great water pressure that did an excellent job of hiding the sound of his sobbing, and it was nearly an hour before he climbed out and toweled himself off.

The little light on his room phone was blinking when he was finally dry and in his underwear and the bathrobe, his hair standing up in spikes from running a towel back and forth to get rid of the excess moisture. After a minute or so he figured out it meant he had a message, and a minute or so after that he figured out how to retrieve said message. It was the front desk, letting him know some shopping bags had been left for him, and to call when the hotel staff could run them up. The promise of clean clothing nearly had him weeping again, and he dialed immediately then paced the entire five minutes it took for a bellhop to knock on his door.

The bellhop was a pimply kid in his early twenties who looked like he was about to bust a nut right there in the hallway at the sight of Dean in his bathrobe. The omega managed to politely but curtly thank him and tell him to add a twenty dollar tip to his hotel bill as he grabbed the bags and slammed his door shut in the kid’s face. He barely made it to the bed before he was dumping the clothes out and digging through them for something to wear, grabbing a pair of grey boxer briefs, light blue jeans with distressed knees, and a green henley. Clearly, Lily Sunder had been sent to him by God.

He yanked open the packaging, pulled off the tags, and was slipping everything on with a relieved sigh when he heard it. On the other side of the wall mounted television, in what he knew to be Sam’s room, was a particularly loud and happy moan. It stopped him with one sock half on and his jeans still unbuttoned as he tried to convince himself he couldn’t have heard what he thought he just did. It was barely six o’clock, they were in the _Conrad_ , and Sam Wesson was apparently watching porn with the volume turned way up. Dean could feel the heat rising up his neck and into his face as he listened to the noises from a very happy man and woman and wondered how on earth such an expensive hotel could have such thin walls. He decided to ignore it, what his young and apparently horny lawyer did on his own time was his own business, so long as he never expected Dean to participate. He was in the process of trying to figure out how to navigate the TV menu when the random moaning turned to something much more specific that he couldn’t possibly ignore.

“ _Oh...fuck...SAM_!”


	6. Well, It Was Such an Awkward Night

If things had been uncomfortable earlier, now they were downright mortifying as Dean stared at the wall and tried not to imagine what the female owner of that voice looked like, or what exactly Sam was doing to her to elicit that gasp. He knew it shouldn’t bother him, it wasn’t any of his business who was having sex or where they were having sex, but Sam was supposed to be at his beck and call, and apparently, he’d beckoned and called someone to come up to his room to play hide the cannoli. Clearly, his lawyer had the same priorities as every other alpha on the planet, and keeping Dean safe was not one of them. Before he even knew what he was doing, he had the phone in his hand and was punching numbers furiously into the keypad. He had no idea what he was going to say once his call was answered, but he sure as hell wasn’t putting up with this; not after the day he had.

“ _Room service_.”

“I’d like a burger sent up to room 1021,” Dean blurted out, knowing he should have at least opened a menu before calling. It didn’t matter, though. The burger was just a precursor for what he really wanted. “And fries. Lots of fries.”

“ _I’m afraid our restaurants don’t carry_ **_burgers_**.” The guy on the other end of the line said ‘burger’ like it was personally offensive and Dean felt the desperate need to hit someone. “ _We offer steak from The Capital Grille if that would be suitable._ ”

“Yes, sure, fine. Steak. Medium rare. With whatever kind of potato side you offer.”

“ _What kind of steak? Our dry aged New York strip? Our bone-in ribeye? Our filet mignon? We have lovely double cut lamb rib chops…_ ”

It wasn’t just the girl making noise on the other side of the wall anymore, and sweet Jesus, the _last_ thing Dean needed right now was to be imagining his lawyer’s sex face.

“Not the lamb, other than that I really don’t care, pick one,” he said, pinching the bridge of his nose to ward off the headache building behind his eyes. “Your favorite one. Whichever one you think is best, or that most people like, send that up, as long as there are no mushrooms because the texture is disturbing.” The noises stopped briefly and Dean prayed they were done. It really wasn’t his lucky day, though, because after a few moments they started up again - louder. “And wine. I would like two bottles of sauvignon blanc, please. Charge it to the room.”

“ ** _Sauvignon blanc_** _?! With_ **_red meat_** _?!_ ”

“They’re my tastebuds, just send it up!”

“ _As you like. Remember to have your I.D. ready when the porter arrives so we can verify your age for the alcohol._ ”

The feeling that God loved him by sending him Lily Sunder and Tara Benchley was rapidly fading as Dean listened to the bed in Sam’s room start to squeak dangerously.

“You’re _kidding_ ,” he snapped, deciding this conversation had gone on long enough and cutting off the snooty front desk clerk, or whoever felt the need to inject their opinion on his order and saying, “You know what, it’s fine, forget the wine, just send up the food.”

“ _Yes sir_.”

Slamming the phone down didn’t make Dean feel any better, nor did it drown out the sounds coming from next door. There was no way he could deal with this sober, and with Sam otherwise occupied he couldn’t make his way down to the hotel bar - not that he would anyway with the damn collar around his neck like a neon sign reminding people he’d been maligned in the news as a murderer all damn day. He could always just turn his TV on and crank the volume, but that wouldn’t help scrub his brain of the images currently running through it about what one of his lawyers was doing, and with white knuckles he picked up the phone again.

Sam had never had a rut come on so fast as the one that started building shortly after he caught his first glimpse of Dean Smith. It probably meant something, but he couldn’t really spare the brain cells to think about it when he was currently using every ounce of willpower he possessed not to try to sniff Dean through the wall. The last thing their client needed was the rookie on his defense team acting inappropriately, and Sam called his pharmacy for a suppressant shot the second he hit his room. He doubted he’d ever live down the humiliation of having to call Lily and let her know his rut decided to show up a month and a half early, or to assure her he didn’t need her to send someone to help him out, he was pretty sure his girlfriend would run over to take the edge off until he could get his suppressants delivered in the morning. Calling Jess his girlfriend was a bit of a stretch, of course, though his employer didn’t need to know that, and after their tryst at the gym earlier in the day he was pretty sure she wouldn’t mind the upgrade.

For several minutes Lily sounded ready to pull him out of the hotel and send Tara to stay with Dean instead, but Sam managed to talk her out of that. _Why_ he was talking her out of it he hadn’t a clue, since sending him home was the logical thing to do under the circumstances. Still, there was a little voice at the back of his brain insisting that he needed the omega to see right off the bat that he wasn’t a slave to his baser instincts, not even when his rut hit, if he had any hope of getting Dean to trust him. That he was two seconds away from dry humping the mini fridge just to get some pressure on the swelling appendage tenting his pants didn’t need to be part of the discussion.

Jess, surprisingly, did not laugh in his face or chew him out for essentially using her as a booty call, which was fantastic because Sam already spent fifteen minutes talking himself out of running into the bathroom to rub one out really quick before he called her. It probably would have been a good idea just to unwind a little before she got there, but try as he might to turn his brain towards more appropriate spank bank material, the only thing Sam could picture whenever he closed his eyes were the many stunning qualities that made up Dean Smith’s physique. It was bad enough he planned to spend most of the evening going multiple rounds with his quasi-girlfriend rather than working on Dean’s case while the omega was right next door. He’d never be able to look their client in the eye if he jerked off to the mental image of feathery lashes fluttering above freckled cheeks.

The half hour it took Jess to get to the Conrad with her little overnight bag seemed like days, and once she was inside Sam didn’t waste much time with small talk. She handled that for him, cooing at how riled up he was and not to worry, she’d make it all better as he pinned her against the door and went to town marking her neck. Her running commentary was irritating when he just wanted to shove his tongue down her throat, but he figured he could put up with it for once since she was doing him such a huge favor. Discovering she wasn’t wearing panties under her knee-length dress was a nice surprise that he probably would have found tasteless under different circumstances, considering where they were and that he was on the company’s dime. As it was, he merely growled, got his pants down far enough to free himself and roll on a condom, then slid into her right where they were standing.

It still shocked him how athletic Jess was as she climbed him so he could carry her over to the bed, undoing the buttons on his shirt as they went. It wasn’t easy with his pants down around his thighs and her ruthlessly stripping him, but somehow they managed it. By the time he was on the mattress with her riding him like a machine, he was down to his socks and she only had a garter belt left, which had survived simply because he hadn’t been able to unhook it and she hadn’t tried. His inner wolf longed for the scent of something beyond the generic beta smell, but his dick really didn’t care, since it was getting what it had been needing for the last four hours or so. Jess was clearly enjoying herself, too, given how vocal she was being, and after letting her run the show for a while he flipped her onto her back to chase his first orgasm.

He never actually got there. Jess was clawing his back and clenching around him, and he only needed a few more thrusts when the phone rang. It was the hotel phone, not his cell, and the generic ringtone broke through the haze of hormones just enough that he was able to stop. That made Jess very unhappy, if the way she tightened around him to spur him on was any indication, and he groaned in both pleasure and resignation as he reached to answer it.

“Don’t,” she gasped, leaving bright red claw marks from his shoulder blades to his waist. “Keep going.”

“I have to answer it,” Sam panted back. “It might be my boss.”

“But your boss knows I’m here,” she objected, latching onto his collarbone and sucking another groan right out of him.

“I’m sorry, we’ll get right back to this, I promise.” She was obviously displeased when he rolled off of her and across the rumpled comforter, sitting up as he brought the receiver to his ear. “Hello?” 

“ _I need you to call down to room service and order two bottles of sauvignon blanc, then bring them to my room._ ”

“What...Dean?” No matter how attractive their client was, Sam could barely contain his rage at having been literally cockblocked. “Why are you calling me?!”

“ _I just told you! I need you to order me two bottles of sauvignon blanc and bring them over once you’ve got them from room service!_ ”

“Order them yourself! It’s all going on the corporate card!”

“ _I tried, but they need to see I.D. and the cops didn’t exactly let me grab my wallet before they cuffed me!_ ”

“Can it wait?!”

“ _That depends. If you’re finished with round one, then I guess it can wait, but if you’re going to jump right back into trying to slam your bed through the wall and into my room, then no, I would rather start getting drunk as soon as humanly possible. I figure if I can black out by nine o’clock I’ve got a good shot of forgetting_ ** _everything_** _I’ve heard in the last twenty minutes_.”

Apparently the only thing Sam’s erection needed to send it running for the hills was the knowledge that Dean was acutely aware of what he and Jess were up to. The traitor between his legs, which had been making his life miserable all day, wilted pathetically as he grabbed a pillow to place in his lap. Something about talking to the omega when Dean knew he was buck naked just didn’t sit right with Sam, and he felt a blush creeping up his face.

“Sauvignon blanc, you said?” he asked, his voice cracking like he’d just hit puberty. He’d have mourned the loss of his dignity, but apparently it already fled twenty minutes ago and it wasn’t coming back.

“ _Two bottles_.”

Mercifully, Dean hung up without further discussion about Sam’s extracurricular activities.

“Dean?” Jess asked, not moving from where she still laid naked and sweaty on the far side of the bed. “So not the boss?”

“No,” Sam replied as he dragged a hand through his hair.

“Good, then we can get back to what we were doing.”

She rolled onto her stomach with a lecherous grin, licking her teeth as she reached for his arm. For some reason, Sam couldn’t stand the thought of letting her touch him after talking to Dean, ludicrous as it was since he _was_ hoping they’d get back to where they left off at some point. Calling room service gave him an excellent excuse to gently pull free of her hold, though he didn’t miss the way the corners of her mouth turned down as she watched him.

“It wasn’t my boss, but it was work related,” he explained.

“Oh?” she said, raising herself up onto an elbow and pretending she hadn’t done it specifically to draw attention to her breasts.

“The client needs me to order him wine.”

“What? Why?”

“He doesn’t have his I.D. and he needs a distraction.”

“From what?”

“Uh...us. He’s right next door and apparently we’re kind of...loud.”

He had no idea how Jess might take finding out Dean could hear them, but he certainly didn’t expect her to burst out laughing after staring at him incredulously for a moment. He wasn’t sure why she found the whole thing funny and managed not to bristle at her response even as she rolled onto her back and continued to giggle. She was still being loud, and all Sam could think of now was Dean sitting on the other side of the wall _knowing_ she was laughing at him. Hopefully the omega wouldn’t think _he_ found it funny as well or Sam would probably be getting kicked off his first murder case very shortly.

“Are you serious?” Jess finally demanded when she realized Sam wasn’t going to start laughing with her.

“Why would I make something like that up?” Sam shot back, watching his evening quickly detour towards a lovers’ quarrel and not quite sure how to get things back on track when he really wasn’t in the mood for anything sexual anymore, no matter what his hormones were telling him he needed.

“I don’t know, I’m just surprised that your client’s a prude is all,” she said simply, and Sam had to bite his tongue to keep from telling her to keep her voice down. “I mean, he’s an omega, right? Gratuitous sex is kind of their thing.”

“What?”

“Oh come on, baby. Everybody knows that there are two kinds of omegas in this world. The ‘saving themselves for matehood’ om and the ‘fucks anything on two legs’ om. I just figured working as an escort he’d be the latter, not the former.”

“Well, right now he’s an ‘I’ve spent the day in a city jail getting beaten up by my cell mate and the cops’ om, so I’d like to honor his request, if you don’t mind.” That came out much harsher than he intended, but Sam’s brain and vocal cords weren’t exactly in sync. It was clear by the glare leveled at him that Jess was two seconds from leaving, and he hastened to add, “I’m sorry, it’s been a very long and stressful day for everyone, Lily specifically added me to this case and I’m worried about screwing up, and now my rut’s hitting. I’m sorry. Let me order this for him and then we’ll be able to forget about it and relax, okay?”

“Well…” She was pouting at him, but it was the look he knew meant he needed to do a little more cajoling to get on her good side, not the one that meant he’d be spending the night in the company of his hand. “Okay. But only if you buy me dinner. The two restaurants here are supposed to be amazing.”

“Deal,” Sam said quickly, handing her the menus as he picked up the phone to order the sauvignon blanc. 

By the time it arrived they were back to lazily ( _and quietly_ ) necking, wearing the complementary robes from the bathroom after debating what to eat. Sure enough, they asked for Sam’s I.D. before turning over the bottles, and he waited until the porter was back on the elevator before heading next door to give them to Dean. The omega was apparently as embarrassed by the situation as Sam was since he had bright pink spots high on his cheeks that almost looked like a rash when he answered Sam’s knocking. He grabbed the two bottles with a curt, “Thanks,” then slammed the door shut again without even meeting the alpha’s eyes. When Sam closed the door to his own room, he noticed the television in Dean’s room was turned up loud enough that there could be an explosion in the hallway and Dean probably wouldn’t notice. Even so, he didn’t resume any serious activities with Jess until well after they’d finished dinner and he could be reasonably certain his client had enough time to get through at least one of the bottles of wine.

Sam’s alarm went off at six thirty like it did every morning, which unfortunately didn’t give him enough time to have a nice round of wake-up sex with Jess when she had to be to work by seven and was already in the shower. He figured that was okay, they’d fucked four times throughout the night and she was probably pretty chafed. If he could get a good hour’s run in at the hotel’s on-site fitness center, he should be okay until the pharmacy ran over his suppressant shot when they opened at eight. Lily had given him the morning off while he got himself sorted, so he wouldn’t need to log on to his laptop until after lunch.

The problem then became what to do about Dean. The fitness center was on the ground floor according to the hotel’s website, which was well over a hundred feet from their rooms, so he’d have to try to convince their client to come with him. If he managed that, he’d move on to convincing the omega not to complain to his boss, but at such an ungodly hour he fully planned to take things one step at a time. There was no guarantee Dean would even speak to him, and he was so preoccupied that Jess had to clear her throat while she was standing at the door to get his attention. Luckily she bought his preoccupation as a lingering post-coital haze and took it as a compliment rather than an insult that he’d basically forgotten she was still there. 

“Hopefully I didn’t permanently break your brain,” she teased as he slung his arms around her waist, winding her fingers into his hair. “I kind of like how smart you are.”

“Trust me, my brain is not the part of my anatomy you need to worry about breaking,” he said, enjoying the feel of her finger-combing his bed head into something slightly more presentable. “Thanks for coming over, especially on such short notice.”

“Of course,” she returned with a smile. “If we become a more permanent thing, I’ll have to get used to nights like that anyway, won’t I? Besides, I had a great time.”

“Me too.”

“You sure you’re not going to get in trouble with your boss for having me over and buying dinner?”

“I’ll just reimburse the firm for the difference. I’m not the only alpha on the payroll. Lily knows things like this happen.”

“Mmm. Well I’m glad you thought of _me_ when it happened and didn’t try to make do on your own. You probably would have gone blind.”

He laughed and kissed her extra thoroughly just to sell the lie of being distracted by _her_ instead of his client, and she even offered to come help him out again that night if he still needed it. It should have been easier than it was to convince himself that yes, she was absolutely girlfriend material as she wiggled away towards the elevator in her work uniform, but he was already plotting how to approach the omega staying next door. He knew it was dangerous to get his wires crossed like this, though hopefully the suppressants would help shut up his rambunctious inner wolf. He’d definitely need to solidify his relationship with Jess in the next few days, regardless of whether or not her mentioning their situation becoming something more permanent turned his stomach.


	7. I Only Wanted to Be Some Kind of Friend

The straightforward approach seemed Sam’s best shot at getting Dean on board with the morning exercise plan; simply talking to him as equals about going downstairs for a run, like just a couple of guys getting to know each other and _not_ as their designations. That went out the window when Dean threw open the door at Sam’s knocking with a scowl and a snarl, his hair adorably mussed and deep circles under his eyes. It was at that point Sam remembered he’d ordered the shorter man two bottles of wine the night before, the outline of which he could vaguely see on the coffee table across the room. They were lying on their sides, so clearly Dean finished them both, and that explained why he looked so irritated as he squinted out into the hallway at his legally designated chaperone.

“What?” he barked. His voice sounded particularly rough and sleep-worn. Sam deliberately did not think about hearing that voice coming from the other side of his bed every morning.

“I...uh…” The little rehearsed speech he’d planned on the five foot walk between their two doors had vacated the premises of Sam’s brain. “I thought I should apologize. For last night.”

“Man, whatever, you were off the clock, I don’t give a fuck,” Dean grumbled. “Just keep it down next time.”

“There shouldn’t...uh...there shouldn’t be a next time.” The omega scratched absently at his stomach and Sam had to rethink that assertion when he saw a patch of creamy skin. Little Sam was definitely on board with the idea of a lot more sex. “I mean...I’m sorry, my rut’s starting, and it caught me off guard because it’s a month and a half early and…”

“Whoa, dude.” Sam didn’t miss the way Dean took a step back from him, his hand firm on the door and clearly ready to slam it shut. “TMI. I don’t need to know about that kind of shit.”

“No, I know, I just didn’t want you thinking I routinely invite my girlfriend to hotel rooms on the company dime to keep the other guests awake.”

“What you do in your off hours is really none of my business.”

“I know that!” Raising his voice clearly wasn’t helping the situation either, given the tension coiling the omega’s shoulders, and Sam let out a long, slow breath before his inner wolf could take over. “What I meant to say is that I am _truly_ sorry for anything you heard last night that might have made you feel uncomfortable. I’ve already called my suppressant in and the pharmacy is going to deliver me an emergency shot as soon as they open. I’d have had it last night but they had to check with my doctor because I’m way off schedule. I realize that none of this probably reassures you about my ability to keep sensitive information confidential but I really wanted to explain why I was so borderline inappropriate. I promise it won’t happen again.”

At last Dean relaxed minutely, his shoulders still high but his knuckles no longer white where he gripped the door as he said quietly, “You were a little more than borderline, but okay.” After another few seconds where the tension between them started to ebb, he added, “Girlfriend, huh?”

“Well, kind of,” Sam replied with a small laugh. He could do this, talk to Dean man to man and not alpha to omega.

“Kind of?”

“We’ve been seeing each other for about a month.”

“And she came all the way down here to help you out with your rut? Sounds like she should get a promotion for that.”

“Probably.” Casually discussing Jess with Dean made Sam terribly uncomfortable, like he was betraying one or the other, but the fact that Dean was still talking to him gave Sam enough confidence to continue after bracing himself for the possibility of rejection. “Which brings me to my other reason for being here. My...uh...activities last night helped wind me down but I could really use a run to tide me over until the shot gets here.”

“Uh…” Dean very plainly didn’t have a clue why Sam was telling him this, and he was unfairly adorable when he was confused. “Okay?”

“The problem is the hotel’s gym is on the first floor so you’d have to come with me.”

Now Dean looked like Sam had grown two heads, and he was still unfairly adorable as he said, “I don’t think so.”

“You don’t have to use the equipment, you just need to sit in the room with me,” Sam suggested. “I’ll pop my earbuds in and climb on the treadmill, you can probably take a nap on a yoga mat or something.”

“Mr. Wesson…”

“Sam. Please.”

“Fine, _Sam_ , I am not going to go down to the hotel gym with you and sleep on a yoga mat.”

“Why not?”

“Because the sun’s not even up yet, I don’t have any workout gear, and I’m still pretty drunk.”

“You can wear my clothes.” The growl Dean emitted at the suggestion was not particularly subtle, and Sam held up his hands quickly. “I don’t mean that like it sounds, my coworker called from my apartment so I could tell him what I needed and I had him grab me a couple sets of workout clothes. I have tee shirts, shorts, sweatpants, really whatever would make you comfortable. All clean. I mean, they probably smell a little like me, but I swear I just did laundry on Sunday.”

That Dean hadn’t slammed the door in his face seemed like a considerable win, and after a few moments of mulling things over, the omega asked, “What about my collar?”

“Throw a towel around your neck,” Sam said immediately. “If you stand a little behind me and keep your head down, no one will even notice.”

“And you really don’t care if I sleep on a yoga mat?”

“You could dance the funky chicken, just as long as we’re within one hundred feet of each other so we don’t set off the damned collar. Please?”

Dean still looked skeptical, leaving Sam no choice but to pull out what his mother called his puppy dog expression. He hadn’t met a single human being so far who could withstand it. Dean turned out to be no exception, huffing in annoyance and rolling his eyes.

“Fine,” he finally said. Sam had to fight the urge to do a fistbump. “Bring me your stupid workout clothes and all the bottled water from your mini fridge. I need to hydrate.”

Sam could feel his dimples popping as he grinned at the omega, who merely rolled his eyes again and closed the door in the alpha’s face. He managed to get his preening inner wolf under control by the time he returned in his tee shirt and shorts with options for the smaller man to wear. If a rather large portion of his hindbrain was salivating at the thought of seeing Dean in his clothes, well, Sam was definitely going to keep that to himself.

Dean figured he had to be crazy to agree to head down to the gym when he felt like ass, especially when the guy asking him to be a workout buddy was an alpha. It was probably just the after-effects of _way_ too much wine that had him caving after only a few seconds of looking at his lawyer’s dopey face ( _his eyes were a green-blue this morning_ ). Normally he was far more resilient against the longing stares of alphas, but he was willing to admit the kid won some major points for apologizing about being a knothead the night before. It was a good thing, too, since he’d planned to ask for Sam to be kicked off the case, though now that he knew the alpha’s rut hit him early his behavior the night before was understandable. It also explained the faint hints of nutmeg that had joined his scent, not strong enough yet for Dean to have to worry about his lawyer losing control. He seemed to really want to please not only his boss but Dean as well, and the omega planned to take full advantage of that for as long as the stupid state of Indiana forced him to stay glued to Sam’s hip.

Sam did a remarkable job at not drooling or staring when Dean snatched the small pile of clothes he brought back, disappeared into his room, and then reappeared in Sam’s tee shirt and basketball shorts with a towel slung around his neck. Despite being a pretty big guy, Dean looked as tiny in Sam’s workout clothes as he had in Sam’s jacket, and even if Sam hadn’t been fighting off his rut that would have done things to him. Even with his smaller frame, Sam could see the omega was fit, managing to only get distracted by his naked forearms and calves for a moment before turning to lead the way to the elevator. Dean trailed behind, head down as Sam suggested to help hide the collar, and quickened his pace enough for Sam to feel the line of Dean’s body heat against his back when a beta in a business suit emerged from one of the nearby hotel rooms.

The great thing about betas was their inability to smell changes in scent, so the businessman was blissfully unaware of Dean slowly filling the car with omega panic as the three of them rode the elevator down together to the first floor. He hung back behind Sam, grateful his lawyer was built like a sequoia, but he still saw the man glance his way a couple of times. Of course, it was always possible he was glancing over at the obscene hickeys on Sam’s neck, which Dean had been trying his hardest to ignore. He really was glad the alpha cleared the air between them first thing, or he wouldn’t be able to look at the guy without blushing.

Sam must have noticed the overly curious businessman as well since he had a hand on the small of Dean’s back to usher him out of the car the second they stopped at the ground floor. Now that he knew what Sam was doing after the lobby incident, it was easier for Dean to suppress his instinctive flinch and shift a few inches closer to make them look like a couple. He’d managed to train himself before not to recoil from Walter until he was truly at ease standing pressed up against him for various photographers. He could still tap into that until he was a little more comfortable with his alpha lawyer.

The businessman didn’t pay them any mind, veering off towards the breakfast buffet as he pulled out his cell to start checking his email. The lobby was surprisingly crowded for seven o’clock on a weekday, though it made sense when Dean spotted the sign for a dentist’s convention, at which point he was very glad he still was pretty buzzed. If he had to deal with that many scents and strangers this early in the morning he’d have been easily overwhelmed, but he felt floaty enough to let Sam steer him whatever direction he chose. A squeaky little voice inside his head was shrieking that it was dangerous to let an alpha call the shots without paying too much attention to his surroundings, only between the citrus, cedar, and nutmeg wafting off of his very tall chaperone, Dean couldn’t really be bothered to listen to it.

He did start listening when they ended up at the front desk after roaming around the ground floor for fifteen minutes and the clerk apologetically explained that they’d just finished remodeling and the fitness center had been moved to the sixth floor. By the time he’d followed Sam back to the elevator he was pretty sure they’d walked enough that Sam didn’t need to get his damn run in, and the promise of sleeping on a yoga mat was really paling in comparison to the warm, fluffy bed in his room. He had no clue irritation was rolling off of him in waves until they were closed in the elevator again and the small compartment was suddenly filled with soothing alpha pheromones.

“God, would you stop that?” he grumbled, leaning into the corner and wondering if maybe he could take a two minute nap standing up. 

“Stop what?” Sam asked through clenched teeth. The longer he was stuck with Dean and his oh-so-amazing scent, the more photos of crime scenes he needed to picture to behave appropriately around him.

“Wow. That girlfriend of yours sure has you trained if you don’t even know you’re doing it,” Dean marveled, wondering why his lawyer went rigid at the mention of his girlfriend.

“I honestly have no idea what I’m doing,” Sam informed him as calmly as he could, digging into the duffle slung over his shoulder so he could guzzle water and get rid of his suddenly dry mouth.

“The calming pheromones. The second I get agitated you just shoot ‘em out like...laser eyes or something.”

“Laser eyes?”

“Whatever, I told you I was still drunk.”

“Well, I’m sorry if it bothers you. I had no idea I was doing that.”

“Like I said, the girlfriend’s got you trained.” He actually made a ‘w-pish’ sound just to indicate how whipped he thought Sam was, which was enough to have the younger man bristling. “Lucky girl.”

“Not that it’s any of your business, but Jess is a beta. I’m probably just reacting to you because of my rut. I don’t date omegas.”

“Really? Interesting.”

“Why?”

“No reason.” The elevator dinged and the doors slid open for the sixth floor to Sam’s great relief, since the conversation was really starting to get under his skin. “Well, maybe it’s not interesting as much as it’s reassuring.”

“Reassuring?” Sam echoed, well aware that he was walking faster than was probably comfortable for his still-drunk client to keep up easily but really needing to get on a treadmill. “How so?”

“You don’t date omegas, I don’t date alphas,” Dean explained as he trudged after Sam into the empty fitness center and made a beeline for the promised yoga mats. “It’s always nice to meet someone and find out you play from the same rule book.”

Sam fully intended to object to the idea that he would _never_ consider dating an omega, only Dean was already curled into a ball on the floor with his back to the treadmills, one arm bent under his head for use as a pillow and the towel pulled up over his face to block out the light. He looked adorably grumpy, even from just the line of his back, and all Sam wanted to do was lay down behind Dean and cuddle him. Of course, he couldn’t do that, because that was _insane_ , not to mention fifty different shades of inappropriate, and Sam turned quickly to the treadmills and popped in his earbuds so he could listen to his running mix and try to figure out what exactly the _fuck_ was happening to him. It had to be his rut hitting so early that was throwing him off, his hormones in some kind of weird flux and hellbent on making his life miserable. Normally he didn’t mind his rut and the excuse to have a week of sex with whoever was willing, but this was something entirely new and different. There were all kinds of weird, off-putting protective desires mixed up with the lust he was used to, and he wasn’t sure he liked it. Then again, he wasn’t sure he hated it either, and that was even more confusing. The best thing to do was act like Dean wasn’t there, get a good run in, and pray the suppressants were waiting at the front desk by the time he was done.

Something about being in the omega’s presence had Sam switching to his classic rock running mix, one he didn’t listen to often but seemed to fit the situation. He chalked it up to the one video he found of Dean singing _Ramble On_ playing in his head while his client snored lightly behind him, setting out an easy pace as _Sweet Emotion_ blocked out the sound of the treadmill whirring to life. It was a good mix, _Born to Run_ and _I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)_ giving him a steady beat to run along with, though the latter song had his mind wandering back to the man sleeping on the yoga mat in the otherwise empty fitness center. He convinced himself that was fine, though, nothing wrong with his mind wandering as long as his hands stayed politely to themselves. That lie was harder to sell as _I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)_ switched to _Rock You Like a Hurricane_ , then _Heartbreaker_ , _Burnin’ for You_ , and _Hungry Like the Wolf_. At that point, he decided he absolutely hated his classic rock mix and switched to his ‘90s alternative mix. _Come Out and Play_ and _Smells Like Teen Spirit_ definitely didn’t leave him longing to lose himself in the aroma of ginger and peach cobbler, letting him focus on running until his legs started to give out.

By the time he was done an hour had passed and his head finally seemed clear of the fog of hormones he’d been swimming in since the previous morning. Surprisingly, he and Dean were still the only people in the fitness room, which Sam supposed wasn’t that odd given it was a Tuesday and most guests would be there for conventions, like the dentist in the elevator. _Celebrity Skin_ wasn’t exactly helping him cool down as he finished another bottle of water, however, so he plucked his earbuds out while he stretched, immediately hearing the whimpering behind him.

How he’d missed the torrent of distress pouring off his client Sam didn’t really know, though he was pretty sweaty and couldn’t smell much beyond himself. Dean was still sleeping, but he’d rolled onto his back, the towel fallen from his face and his eyes flicking rapidly back and forth beneath his lids. There was sweat gathering at his hairline and darkening the neck of Sam’s tee shirt while his hands tried in vain to dig into the yoga mat. When the word, “Stop,” ghosted past his lips, pained and pleading, Sam managed to snap out of his stupor and rushed to wake the smaller man from whatever nightmare he was clearly having.

“Dean,” he murmured, noticing that huh, the omega was definitely right, he’d let off a plume of calming pheromones without even thinking about it, despite his client not even being conscious. “Dean, come on, wake up.”

“Don’t,” Dean grunted, twisting onto his side with a whine, but it clearly was not in response to Sam. “Don’t.”

“Dean!”

The omega showed absolutely no sign of snapping out of it on his own, so Sam grabbed his shoulder to give him a good, hard shake. He never expected Dean’s eyes to snap open or to fixate on his face, looking at Sam without seeing him, and he certainly hadn’t anticipated ending up flat on his back with the smaller man beside him, their arms twisted together as Dean pinned him down with a very painful and effective thumb lock. Sam was pretty sure he could break the hold using brute strength, but he _really_ liked his thumb and wanted to keep it attached. The way his wrist and elbow were twisted they probably wouldn’t fare much better if he tried to fight Dean off, and he froze where he was while he waited for his client to stop growling.

“Don’t _ever_ touch me,” Dean snarled, his irises nearly fluorescent gold and still unfocused.

“I’m sorry,” Sam breathed, flattening his free hand to the mat in submission. “You were having some kind of nightmare. I just wanted to wake you up. I wasn’t going to do anything.”

It took several long, painful minutes of Dean staring at him, his nostrils flared as he huffed in giant lungfuls of the soothing cloud wafting off the alpha before he finally let go and sat back on his haunches. Very slowly, lest he end up on his back again, Sam slid away to sit up as well and flex his hand to check for damage to his tendons. Gradually the omega distress flooding the room was replaced with the slightly tangy scent of embarrassment, and Dean turned his attention to grabbing his towel from where it ended up to cover the collar.

“I uh...I need to just ride dreams like that out,” Dean mumbled at last, his alabaster skin turning a bright salmon under Sam’s watchful gaze. “Not that you’ll need to worry about it again. Thank you, though, for trying.”

“Sure,” Sam said softly as Dean climbed to his feet, the omega’s hands shaking badly as he wiped them against his thighs. “I’ve got my run in, so we can head back unless you wanted to hit the weights or something.”

“No,” Dean said instantly, clenching and unclenching his fists, his breathing slowly evening out. “No, I’m good.”

“Okay.”

Despite the assertion that he was good, Dean gave Sam a wide berth as the alpha stood and went to retrieve his duffel bag, flinching when Sam tried to hand him a water bottle. Sam desperately wanted to know what kind of dreams would have Dean avoiding physical contact even after they ended, but at the moment the omega wasn’t even willing to look at him. It left Sam with the ridiculous desire to wrap himself around the other man to shield him from the world, which was probably the worst idea in the history of bad ideas. They were shaken out of the strange quasi-Mexican standoff they’d fallen into by a pair of female betas wandering in, gossiping and laughing, and Dean darted out of the fitness center so fast that Sam worried the omega would put more than a hundred feet between them before he could catch up. While he managed to keep in close enough proximity not to set off Dean’s collar, they didn’t speak at all on the ride back up to the room, and that seemed worse than if the police had shown up. Only when they’d reached their respective doors did Dean blurt out, “You can come get your stuff later,” making Sam feel like the morning wasn’t a complete disaster. As long as his suppressants were downstairs, everything would be fine. He was sure of it.


	8. I Know There Is No One That Can Save Me From Myself

Dean never called Sam back to get his things, instead avoiding him like the plague for the following three days they were stuck at the Conrad. Lily and Tara didn’t have much to update them on, giving Sam no real reason to work in a business meeting with the other daily tasks he was handling remotely, and Dean politely declined every other overture the alpha made. Whether it was asking if he wanted more wine or seeing if he’d like to get out of his room to have a meal in one of the restaurants, Sam got nowhere with Dean. 

Even so, he couldn’t get their lovely client out of his head, not even after he’d gotten his emergency suppressant shot and started in on his prescription. The omega’s story was so compelling, so believable that the alpha continued to feel deeply ashamed at having always assumed omegas claiming Chastity’s Law were simply crying wolf. Dean Smith had the bruises and the anxiety to show for something very serious happening to him. He might be able to fake the tears, but he’d have to be a damn fine actor to fake that much distress in his scent.

It wasn’t only Dean’s looks and vulnerability that had Sam enthralled, even as he phoned up Jess to ask her back over to the hotel for dinner and ended up skipping dessert two nights in a row. What he’d said about Dixon seeming possessed stuck with Sam; crawled between his ribs and made him feel queasy. Lily was right, of course. Demons existed, everyone knew that, but they were exceedingly rare to encounter. Werewolves, vampires, and ghosts were the everyday supernatural creatures that the general population ran afoul of, but outside of a massive sacrificial event that happened right around the time the omega population went into sharp decline, demons were pretty much nonexistent in daily life.

Or were they nonexistent? While Sam would admit to having a morbid fascination with things that went bump in the night, he’d never actually put any effort into following stories about the Federal Department of Hunters or reading any of the literature they distributed to the populace so civilians would know when to call them about a potential skinwalker versus a stray dog. It had always held too close of an association with his grandfather for Sam to be comfortable with it. Though the FBI and FDH didn’t usually play together well, they were both government agencies with massive bureaucracies that typically shafted the little guy. They were necessary for dealing with serious threats to the public but often didn’t care who got trampled along the way. 

Suddenly, though, he wanted Dean to tell him every detail of his fight with Dixon so he could dig into anything and everything he could find about possession, soullessness, and what would cause a formerly mild-mannered alpha to attack like he was rabid. It didn’t hurt that pursuing this line of questioning and research meant he’d have to get into deep discussions with their client whether Lily or Tara thought they’d need to fall back on a demon defense while they dismantled the D.A.’s case. Just the thought of those plush lips and feathery lashes had Sam rolling over more than once to wake Jess up so he could slide into her again and pretend she had a deeper voice as she cried out his name.

On Friday the police finally released Dean’s house and Sam got the call before noon to meet his bosses there with their client in tow. Besides slow walking every aspect of the omega’s case, someone in the prosecutor’s office was kind enough to leak to the media the fact that the Escort Murderer’s house was no longer cordoned off and he was likely to return home to it. The partners at Sunder & Benchley were pissed off enough as it was that the local networks had given Dean a fancy name, and one that wasn’t even catchy at that, without the D.A. continuing to jerk them around. They wore matching scowls when Sam nearly ran over three separate reporters trying to pull into the driveway behind Lily’s Mercedes.

Flashbulbs were already going off before Sam even had the car in park, Dean flinching in the seat beside him at the sound of every journalist in the tri-state area shouting questions at him and his lawyers. Dean was doing his best to put on a brave face even as his panicked scent quickly filled the car’s interior, but it couldn’t stop Sam from noticing how rapidly the omega was breathing. If they didn’t get inside soon, Dean was probably going to hyperventilate, which would just make the media frenzy that much worse. Sam didn’t realize he was just as wound up as their client until Lily knocked on his window and he nearly jumped out of his skin.

“Not one word to these vultures,” Lily ordered when Sam cracked the window enough to hear what she had to say, and he agreed with a nod as Tara positioned herself by the passenger door. In quickly coordinated steps, Lily opened Sam’s door for him to climb out and grab the bag with Dean’s clothes, then they moved as a unit to collect Dean, all three of them flanking him and shielding him as much as possible from the cameras as they hurried up the front walk.

None of them missed the way Dean was nearly shaking himself to pieces as Tara got the door closed behind all of them and he stopped in the middle of his living room, running a hand over his neck and flinching at the feel of the collar. He had a nice house; a ranch with a floor plan open enough to let them see the kitchen and dining room in one direction and the bedrooms in the other. The living room was painted a delicate shade of green and had been thoroughly tossed by the police looking for evidence. Drawers were pulled out and dumped, there was fingerprint powder on everything, and the floor was littered with toys, causing another spike in distress before Dean blew out a breath and started to pick everything up.

“Sorry about the mess,” he said gruffly, tucking stuffed animals under his arm as he headed towards a Pack ‘N Play in the corner. “You can’t really get a toddler to clean up after themselves.” He froze for a moment, clutching a small stuffed elephant with giant blue eyes in his fist, then tamped everything down so anything bleeding into his scent simply stopped. “It’s just the two of us here, so I don’t usually bother picking up. I don’t really have company over unless my mom comes to visit.”

“Have you called her yet?” Tara asked, getting a quick but firm head shake.

“I’ll call her later. I don’t want to worry her too much. Can we get this over with so I can clean up in here some, take a shower, and try to get my kid back? I figured with the way things have gone so far, they’d have kept me living in a hotel for a month."

“Since they found the weapon at Walter’s house, they really didn’t need to keep you away _this_ long,” Tara explained. “They’re still playing games with the autopsy, and we can’t get a straight answer out of them about when they’re convening the grand jury to decide on formal charges or who will be handling the prosecution. Basically, they’re doing everything they legally can to make your life a living hell.”

“What about Lizzie?” Dean’s hands flexed dangerously around the elephant, which didn’t look anywhere near sturdy enough to withstand the abuse. “Does my living hell extend to her?”

“We have calls in to a couple of highly respected firms with experience in child custody,” Lily assured Dean as she moved to take him by the elbow and walk him to the tan faux suede loveseat. “We still can’t get her location, but we do have a profile of the family she’s with and they’re well respected and stable.”

“Meaning they’re going to look better in court than a single omega with no job and two high profile court cases in his back pocket,” Dean said bitterly, leaving Lily by herself on the loveseat to pace the room. “I’m screwed, aren’t I? Even if you can make this go away, prove what happened with Walter was self defense, I’m screwed.”

“No, though we do need to do some more digging now that we know they’re circling the wagons,” Tara told him.

“Digging?”

“We need to know if there’s anything in your past they can use to try to paint you in an unfavorable light,” Lily explained as Tara joined her on the loveseat since Dean clearly wasn’t going to. “For a man who was on the rise in the music industry a few years ago, you’re something of an enigma. Dean Baker’s life is unfortunately a matter largely of public record. Not much is known about Dean Smith.”

“Other than you won’t model underwear,” Tara added.

“What?” Sam blurted out, earning a raised eyebrow from each of his bosses. It wasn’t really his fault. The word refused to stay lodged in his throat.

“You must have missed those forums,” Tara told him, Dean gaping at them both with eyes so wide he had to be suffering serious lid strain.

“Forums?” he choked.

“Sam did the initial research into your past and he found some very interesting websites devoted to your music career,” Lily explained. “We’ve done some follow-up. You have quite a devoted fanbase in this part of the country. With your looks alone you had a real future ahead of you if you’d headed to one of the coasts, but you gave it all up for your daughter. That’s the sort of thing we can spin to make you look sympathetic to a jury, as long as we don’t get blindsided by any of the other things the forums talk about.”

“Such as?” Dean demanded. His skin was somewhere between grey and green as he grabbed the fireplace mantel and swayed a little.

“There are some pretty elaborate theories surrounding why you _didn’t_ go to the coasts and your relationship with the Lafittes.” Dean’s skin settled firmly on ashen as Lily continued. “We don’t actually believe any of them, but if we can find them the prosecution will, too. We want to be sure there aren’t going to be any disgruntled exes they can drag out to lend any credence to those theories or say anything else that might damage your reputation. As I’m sure you’re acutely aware, a lot of our case is going to come down to how the jury perceives you.”

“You mean which type of om they think I am?” Dean snapped, tightly controlled fury lacing his words. “The kind who’s saving himself until matehood or the kind who sleeps with anything on two legs?” Sam stiffened under the brief glare directed his way, though Dean couldn’t look at him for long before turning to the hearth to collect himself. “Well, saving myself until matehood went out the window with my first heat so I get why you’re worried they’ll go for door number two. To answer your question, no, there are no disgruntled exes they can drag out who’ll call me a slut or a tease or a pervert who gets off on threesomes with my best friends. There was one girl, once, but we only went on a couple of dates before calling it quits.”

“Why?” Tara asked.

“Because Cassie was a beta who wanted kids and since I’m an omega I only shoot blanks. She figured we could still have some fun but I’m not a casual kind of guy so we broke it off. I haven’t talked to her since.”

“That’s it?” Sam said, hoping he didn’t sound as relieved as he felt.

“That’s it,” Dean huffed. “There’s not much to know about Dean Smith because I’m an incredibly boring person. I don’t have family outside my mom and my daughter, I don’t have friends now that Walter is dead, and my range of acquaintances is limited to my former manager and a couple of the other escorts. I’m sure that sounds ridiculous since my job was to accompany strangers around town, but anyone is easy to talk to for a night. No one ever sticks around for what’s behind the pretty face if the pretty face won’t put out. And my therapist says I have trust issues.”

“You’re seeing a therapist?” Tara said as she plucked a small notebook and a pen from the pocket of her jacket.

“‘Seeing’ is a pretty strong word,” Dean replied. “I talk to her from time to time if things get rough, but it’s not like I see her regularly.”

“Her name?”

“Dr. Moseley. She’s with Community Health. And then there’s Garth.”

“Garth?”

“Garth Fitzgerald, my...uh...contact therapist.”

“Your what?”

“Licensed cuddlers,” Lily explained to her two very bewildered colleagues, neither of whom looked like they understood the term any better broken down in layman’s terms. “It’s a relatively new therapy for mateless omegas, only been around about ten years. Contact therapy provides the kind of routine, non-sexual intimacy we need to keep our biology in balance if we’re unable to get it elsewhere.”

“Seriously?” Sam exclaimed, and suddenly it seemed a very real possibility that he would manage to stay on the case in spite of his rut hitting only to be kicked off for not being able to keep his foot out of his mouth.

“Seriously,” Lily said coldly. “It’s had a huge impact on reducing death rates for omegas whose alphas have died. Much of the damage done when the bond breaks can be tempered and in some cases completely reversed with regular soothing touch in a safe, controlled environment.”

“Well, then, how often do you go see this Garth?” Tara asked, managing to defuse the situation with her meticulous note-taking. “If the prosecution finds out about him they can make you look emotionally unbalanced, claim you wanted something more permanent with someone and since you couldn’t get it with Walter, you eliminated him.”

“They already said something like that when they had me in lockup,” Dean mumbled, his hand moving up to massage the back of his neck only to be stopped by the collar. 

“So how often do you see Garth?”

“Depends on how things are going. If it’s a good week, maybe a couple of times. If it’s a bad week, more like every day.”

“The run-up to last Saturday, was it a good week or a bad week?”

“Um...a good week, I guess. I only needed to see Garth twice. Tuesday and Thursday.”

“And Dr. Moseley?”

“I haven’t seen her since my birthday. When...uh...when are we going to start working on a plan to get my daughter back?”

“One court case at a time, Dean,” Lily said firmly, deep frown lines carving themselves around the other omega’s mouth at the dismissal. “Do you have anyone who can come stay with you so you aren’t trying to navigate the press and your neighbors on your own?”

“My mom,” Dean said. “She should have some vacation days she can use to come down.”

“Hopefully she doesn’t watch HLN,” Tara told him with a grimace. “Unfortunately, Nancy Grace has noticed our case, so we’re starting to see national coverage.”

“It’s probably going to turn into a referendum on Chastity’s Law,” Lily growled. “I know we told you this before, but from here on out, Sam is going to quickly become your new best friend. If you need something, you call him. His sole job until this goes away is to drop everything for you and come running. Understand?”

“Yeah,” Dean said through clenched teeth. “Yeah, I understand.”

He gave them a weak smile, they exchanged pleasantries, then fought their way back through the reporters and cameramen with parroted snarls of “No comment.” Lily apologized for having to downgrade Sam to little more than an errand boy when he was probably looking forward to doing more legwork on the case, but Sam barely heard her. He was too busy caught up in the idea that he was in charge of seeing to Dean’s every need, and the wolf inside him howled at the opportunity to prove to the stunning omega how good of an alpha he could be.

Dean was proud of himself for keeping his impending panic attack at bay until his lawyers were out of the house. It was bad enough seeing his personal belongings strewn everywhere like his life was worth less than trash, but the lingering smell of multiple alphas on all of the fabrics was really too much. Lily and Sam must have noticed, and he was grateful they’d ignored the fact that the Indianapolis forensics department must have ordered their investigators to forego the scent blockers before coming over to rub up against his furniture, or whatever they’d done to make his den stink. Watching the media descend on his legal team on the way out brought back too many vivid, unwanted memories of being a pregnant sixteen year old trying to get to the courthouse to testify against the teammates who’d pinned him down in the high school locker room. He’d worked so hard to move past that, and now he was on the floor with his head between his knees, his heart racing and fingers numb as he tried to slow his breathing down before he passed out.

Quite possibly the worst part of the whole scenario was the pressing need he felt to dig Sam’s workout clothes out from under his to scent them. While it was true they were freshly laundered ( _Dean could still smell the fabric softener on them_ ), the tee shirt and shorts smelled decidedly like cedar and citrus, and Dean had been scenting them all week whenever his anxiety started to get the better of him. He hadn’t trusted himself to actually interact with the younger man after the incident at the fitness center, where it had taken every ounce of restraint he possessed not to dive nose-first into Sam’s scent gland to calm himself down, especially when Sam kept inviting his girlfriend over. He still hadn’t decided whether it was a good thing or a bad thing that the puppy with the floppy hair that probably had never met a styling product it couldn’t overcome was basically his personal valet for the foreseeable future, but it was probably a good thing, even if Dean refused to admit it. He hadn’t felt so relaxed by an alpha’s scent since Benny died, and it was terrifying for his inner wolf to be so at ease with someone he just met when he really had no reason to trust Sam Wesson in the long run. It was nice that he came clean about his rut hitting, that he’d respected Dean’s need for space all week, and that he claimed he didn’t date omegas, but an alpha was an alpha was an alpha. The only exceptions Dean ever met to that rule were both dead now, though at least Sam had a steady - if loud - beta to keep him occupied. Why that thought left the omega feeling slightly ill Dean wasn’t particularly interested in dissecting, not when he had a house to clean and still thought his heart might pound its way right out of his chest. 

Eventually, he managed to pull himself together enough to start putting things back in their proper places. As he was sliding all the pictures from Benny and Lisa’s mating ceremony back into the photo album he kept tucked on the bookshelf, Dean had to wonder if the crime scene analysts were always so vindictive when searching a suspect’s home for evidence or if they’d made a special exception for him. He decided it was probably the latter when he moved his cleaning operation from the living room to the kitchen and discovered they’d left the fridge open, letting his food spoil, and was certain of it once he saw the state of his daughter’s room. He’d already checked the bathroom and found the hamper where he’d tossed his shirt flipped over, dirty clothes strewn everywhere, so there was no reason for them to have proceeded to destroy a fair number of Lizzie’s toys. They already had the bookend he’d used to bash Walter’s head in, after all. It wasn’t as if there was another weapon Dean might have hidden in one of her stuffed animals, so decapitating half of them was nothing short of malice.

He gave up at that point, too close to crying to do more than close the door behind him as he finally moved to his room to survey the damage. His clothes were in a pile, many of them mangled, and the more delicate furniture in his bedroom like his nightstand and reading lamp were destroyed. The investigators had also taken it upon themselves to rip open his mattress in search of who knows what, and for several long minutes, Dean just stood there staring and trying not to fly into a rage. He considered calling Lily and Tara back to see the damage to his belongings, deciding against it only because the police would probably just accuse him of doing it himself to try to make them look bad. Instead, he made his way back to the living room, the only room that looked halfway decent, to pick up his landline since his cell phone was nowhere to be found. He’d always thought it was stupid for Privé to require him to keep a house phone like it was still 1987, but now he was glad they did. He needed to see if Dr. Moseley and Garth would make house calls before he had a nervous breakdown, then he had to see if his mom could drop everything and come to Indianapolis to help him replace his damaged furniture. Or maybe he wouldn’t, they’d all have to walk through the press outside and that could get messy. He reconsidered digging Sam’s clothes out again, since his inner wolf was howling for him to call the real deal to come back, and that simply wasn’t an option as far as Dean was concerned. At least, not until he could be reasonably sure that he wouldn’t burst into tears at the drop of a hat in front of the man. With the way things stood as he tried to ignore how badly his home reeked and dialed his mom’s number with trembling hands, that kind of emotional stability was a long way off.


	9. Call On Me, Oh Call Up Darling, I Know Who You Are

Sam and his mother had never been close, the reasons behind which he’d long tried and failed to pinpoint. He was clearly going to have to table their estrangement for another time, however, if he wanted to have anything to talk about with Dean Smith, aside from whether he needed toilet paper. Lily was still strongly against getting bogged down looking into any kind of supernatural angle with what happened to Walter Dixon, but Tara saw no harm in sending Sam on a potential wild goose chase when they needed him to be able to pick up and drop work based on their client’s shifting needs anyway. Thus, Sam was on the phone to Mary Wesson, hoping she’d agree to be a go-between for him and his grandfather so Sam wouldn’t actually have to talk to his namesake. Though Sam might have a law degree from Stanford, Samuel Campbell never failed to make known his disappointment over the fact that his grandson was using his brains to free criminals rather than catch them whenever they spoke, and therefore, they didn’t speak very often.

His mother, as always, was pleased yet shocked to hear from him. ‘Pleased yet shocked’ summed up their entire relationship since Sam presented and Mary no longer seemed to know what to do with him. She’d always expected him to present as an omega with his studious nature and disinterest in competitive sports ( _well, not beyond the soccer championship when he was twelve_ ), not to mention his inherent empathy - at least towards anyone that wasn’t his pain in the ass little brother. In fact, she’d spent most of his life making sure he understood that only weak-willed omegas let their biology rule them, and that despite what society might believe, an omega who devoted themselves primarily to their children without having numerous outside interests was wasting their life. While it was true employment outside the home was difficult for mated oms to obtain, Mary Wesson was of the firm belief that mothers, but omega mothers especially, should have a wide variety of hobbies that did not involve their children. To behave otherwise revealed a certain weakness of character.

And that was how Mary always behaved in her household and around her boys, both of whom she expected to present as omegas like her. Sam was lithe and willowy as a child and Adam, born four years later, was smaller and paler, so when her eldest son turned out to be an alpha and her youngest son turned out to be a beta it threw her for a loop. Her relationship with them had always been distant, since she was the mate of the Lawrence, Kansas District Attorney and that required her to sit on a number of social committees ( _just as a truly modern and liberated om should_ ), leaving her without much time to raise her boys herself, but she’d always felt secure in the knowledge that she was modeling the ideal behavior for the omegas they would one day be. 

It never occurred to her she might have seriously warped her alpha son’s idea of omega behavior, or that her disdain for members of her own designation who “only” wanted to be mothers would fuel her beta son’s desire to break with the family tradition of going to school for law and instead major in sociology. Of course, there was still time for Adam to come to his senses and be one of those tree hugger attorneys who fought to save the rainforests, or something, and hopefully Sam’s brush with Chastity’s Law up in Indiana would help him see the error of his ways in becoming a defense attorney, steering him back to the prosecutorial side of things to follow in his father’s footsteps. So, she was doubly shocked when Sam ( _who never called_ ) called to ask if she could get in touch with _her_ father, because he thought there might be some paranormal aspects about one of Sunder & Bentley’s cases and he needed to speak with one of Grandpa Campbell’s contacts at the FDH.

“ _Is it the Escort Murderer?_ ” she asked softly, and he had to suppress a growl.

“Mom, you know I can’t tell you which case it’s for,” he shot back, annoyed at her long suffering sigh.

“ _But you’re taking a serious interest in that one,_ ” she said in clear disbelief as Sam sat at his desk at three o’clock on a Friday and tried not to grind his teeth.

“Obviously I’m taking a serious interest in that one, Mom,” he sighed. “Our client is facing a first degree murder charge. Indiana has the death penalty, and the way they’re going after him I wouldn’t be surprised if they put that on the table.”

“ _Yes, I know. I saw Nancy Grace’s initial take on the case._ ”

Sam felt a sudden, all-encompassing need to get very, very drunk as he fought off the urge to bang his head on his desk. His dad saw Nancy Grace and her ilk for the cheap showmen they were, but his mother always sucked up everything she said like she was speaking the word of God Himself. His parents’ blind allegiance to the law and firm belief the legal system never made mistakes had been the driving force behind his decision to sit on the other side of the courtroom.

“Look, can you just call Samuel for me and ask if he maybe knows a researcher at the FDH?” he finally asked when he’d managed to steel his nerves to potentially having to listen to his mother’s interpretation of Nancy Grace’s view of his client. “Someone who’s reliable and won’t ask a lot of questions?”

“ _I can, but you could call him yourself. You know he’d love to hear from you._ ”

“So he can try to convince me to come work for the feds? Thanks Mom, but we’ve had that discussion plenty.”

“ _Oh Sam. You know he just wants what’s best for you. We all do. And with how sensitive you’ve always been, eventually you’ll break from getting murderers and drug dealers off on technicalities._ ”

“Well, there’s this little thing called the presumption of innocence that’s one of the most sacred principles of our legal system, so I think I’m good where I am for now.”

“ _If you say so_.” 

Sam had to wonder if all mothers carried a gene that allowed them to inflict a deep sense of guilt with just the slightest shift in the tone of their voice, even those mothers who were too busy hosting garden parties and chatting up mayor’s mates to actually spend any time mothering, and when the hell had he started to care that his mom had never been around?

“I do,” he insisted, wondering if maybe his rut suppressants were messing with his emotions. They usually made him feel slightly depressed for a few days, not angry and betrayed that their housekeeper was the one who brought Adam to all of Sam’s soccer matches instead of his mother. “If you could call him this weekend, that would be really helpful. I don’t want to let this slide.”

“ _Sure I will, honey,_ ” Mary assured him, the smile back in her voice. “ _But this weekend? Don’t you have other plans?_ ”

“Uh...why would I?”

“ _Oh, I don’t know. You mentioned that you’d started seeing a beta at your gym and I just thought you might be busy_.”

Lord help him, he knew he never should have said anything about Jess to his brother. He’d clearly let it slip in a moment of insanity the last time he talked to Adam, and Adam undoubtedly used it to deflect the conversation about his _own_ love life when he made his weekly call to their mother, the little worm. When they got together for Sam’s birthday, he’d need to be sure he found time to hold his kid brother’s head in a toilet and flush.

“I probably will see her this weekend, but it won’t be for the _whole_ weekend,” he said, figuring if he threw her a bone now she’d be less likely to ask about his beguiling client. “I’ll have plenty of time to do some work.”

“ _All work and no play will make my Sammy an extremely dull boy,_ ” she told him, adding with a sigh, “ _And your father and I want to see you happy and settled._ ”

“I’m not even twenty-five yet,” Sam shot back, and he didn’t care how he sounded. First Dean was talking about making his and Jess’ relationship official, and now his mother was. Why so many people cared about him going from casual to serious with the leggy blonde from Planet Fitness he had no idea, but he didn’t like it, especially not when he and Jess _were_ sliding rapidly down the slope towards couplehood. “I have plenty of time to settle down if I decide that’s what I want.”

“ _What is_ **_that_ ** _supposed to mean?_ ”

“Look, Mom, I’ve got to go, I’m still at work. Thanks for helping with Grandpa.”

Sam hung up before his mother could launch into lectures about expectations, grandkids, and carrying on the family name, then turned back to the files on his desk. None of them were pressing - a soliciting charge against a local restaurateur, a slander case against a reporter, a marijuana possession charge against an assemblyman - but he needed something to do while he waited for his phone to ring. He had plans with Jess later and couldn’t even look forward to them with how preoccupied he was with talking to his grandfather and finding someone that could help bolster Dean’s claims, and then there was his whining inner wolf that was clinging to the hope the omega would want someone to come over and check under his bed for the bogeyman. It was a stupid thing to hope for and he was happy to chalk that up to weird effects of this round of suppressants. Otherwise, he just might have to admit he hated being more than one hundred feet from their client and not knowing when he’d see Dean Smith again was slowly driving him insane. 

He’d calmed down a bit before Jess came over for Thai food and a movie simply because his grandfather called on his drive home from the office. Sam never expected to find any comfort in a conversation with Samuel Campbell, only for once there was no talk of Sam throwing his life away when he had all the necessary traits to make an excellent profiler for the Bureau. Instead, Samuel mentioned he was in Chicago closing a racketeering case ( _and yes, he was aware how cliché that sounded_ ) and would be happy to spend an hour in the air to meet Sam for lunch on Saturday. Under normal circumstances, Sam would have politely declined on the premise of having too much on his plate, but ever since he got drawn into Dean’s orbit, ‘normal circumstances’ had been going right out the window. He let Jess think his good mood was because he was happy to see her when she knocked on his door, and didn’t spend much time thinking about how their newly minted relationship seemed to revolve almost entirely around sex.

Much to Sam’s shock and dismay, Jess assumed that lunch with his grandfather meant she was getting an introduction. Fortunately she wasn’t too disappointed when he told her it was a working lunch and he was consulting with Samuel about one of his cases, but the fact that she thought becoming an official couple only the night before would result in immediately meeting his family was disconcerting. He promised to call her later to maybe come hang out at her place after he popped his morning suppressant, wondering how big of a dick it would make him if he backed off a little now that his rut was winding down. It would probably be a good idea to pump the brakes just a bit before she started picking out the china pattern for their mating ceremony, and besides, they _really_ hadn’t talked at all throughout the week outside of coordinating where to meet up and get in each other’s pants. Typically Sam would be just fine with that, only if he and Jess were going to try to build something as boyfriend and girlfriend it would probably be a good idea to find out what her middle name was and if she had a favorite color.

Samuel was waiting for him at Bordeaux, one of the city’s best restaurants that was notoriously difficult to get reservations at on a moment’s notice. Sam might have wondered how his grandfather managed it, but when you were as high up in the Bureau as Samuel Campbell you tended to get your way with the flash of a badge. He was dressed impeccably as always in his standard charcoal suit, peering at the menu through his reading glasses while the overhead lights bounced off his bald head. His grandfather had always been an imposing alpha, even though he stood several inches shorter than Sam, though today he looked relaxed as he decided what to have for lunch.

“Sam,” he said, rising smoothly to shake the younger alpha’s hand when he spotted his grandson in his slightly less well tailored blue suit. “Good to see you, my boy. I appreciate you not finding some excuse to avoid me this time.”

“Well, I appreciate you not trying to talk me into joining the FBI this time,” Sam replied as he slid into the chair opposite his namesake, admiring the freshly arranged orchids in the center of the table.

“It took me a while, but I did pick up on that being the reason we don’t talk as much as I’d like,” Samuel told him, taking a moment to order a bottle of merlot when the server stopped in to take their drink order. “Besides, the longer you stay with this law firm, the more impressed I find myself with your boss.”

“Lily or Tara?” Sam asked, annoyed that Samuel’s wine choice had narrowed his lunch options down to steak or pasta with red sauce.

“Ms. Sunder. I admit, I didn’t think an omega would have what it takes to run a law firm - unless it was your grandmother, rest her soul. But the more I learn about her, the more she seems to be cut from the kind of ambitious cloth all omegas should aspire to, instead of wasting their lives changing diapers.”

“I don’t think changing diapers is necessarily a waste of someone’s life.”

“Really?” Samuel raised an eyebrow in his direction, smiling around his wine glass once the server was done pouring. “Well, your mother said you were seeing someone now but I didn’t think it was that serious already.”

“It’s not,” Sam spit out before taking a long swig from his own glass. It was a nice merlot.

“My apologies. You’ve just never been the settling down kind. I didn’t expect you to start thinking of rugrats until you hit forty and realized a mate and some pups would be good for your career.”

The server was still standing by to take their order, giving Sam the opportunity to rein in his irritation at his grandfather’s assumptions while Samuel ordered the steak and he got the pasta with bolognese. The thing of it was, Samuel was exactly right. Sam had no interest in having children anytime soon, only now all he could think about when discussing diapers was Dean clutching a stuffed elephant like his life depended on it. He still felt far too young to be contemplating such things, but for the first time it occurred to him he might be missing something by writing it off for ‘later.’

“You said you have a contact at the FDH that might be able to help me with the case I’m working on,” Sam finally said when enough time had passed to safely switch topics.

“I do,” Samuel affirmed after another sip. “What little you told me over the phone makes me think you’re dealing with something demonic, though I can’t be certain. The division I ran for a while that liaised with the Department handled creatures that fell outside the normal monster classification, but there was one researcher who always came through for me.”

“And?”

“His name is Bobby Singer.” Samuel pulled a card out of his jacket and handed it to his grandson. It only had the man’s name on the front and a phone number on the back. “He works out of Sioux Falls.”

“The Department has an office in Sioux Falls?” Sam asked.

“No, Singer works out of his salvage yard. He’s good enough that they don’t make him come into the office more than a couple times a year. He has one of the best occult libraries in the country, and an encyclopedic knowledge of lore. If you really think this client of yours ran into something supernatural, Bobby’s the one to help you figure out what it is.”

The rest of the meal turned to discussions of the various cases they were both working, at least as much as they could share with each other, and then to Sam’s mother and how he didn’t call her enough. They talked a little of Jess and quite a lot about Adam, who Samuel also felt was wasting his potential in sociology, but never once did the Campbell patriarch pressure Sam to give up being a defense attorney. By the end of lunch, Sam had even agreed to check in more regularly, at least to let his grandfather know how things went with Singer. All in all, the day turned out to be a pleasant surprise, and he left with the business card burning a hole in his pocket.

Bobby Singer answered on the third ring, his grizzled voice painting a vivid picture of flannel and trucker caps as he barked out the name of his business. It took a bit of convincing to get the man to believe he was related to Samuel Campbell, though he was immediately intrigued when Sam explained what he knew of Dean’s encounter with Walter. The black eyes and getting back up with his skull caved in wasn’t enough to say for sure if Dean was dealing with a demon, and certainly not enough to determine what kind of demon it might be, but Singer gave Sam a list of questions to ask his client the next time they spoke, and promised he’d look into it once the alpha called back with more information. 

The problem then became actually speaking to Dean. The omega hadn’t reached out to him for anything yet, and Sam couldn’t come up with a good reason to stop by and see him outside of telling him about Bobby, and the last thing he wanted to do was get their client’s hopes up on that front. Lily and Tara were keeping Dean updated on his case and where things stood with getting his daughter back ( _his odds for bringing her home looked worse by the day_ ), which left Sam twiddling his thumbs while he waited for Dean to run out of shampoo and need his help. 

At least Jess was game for trying to distract him, incorrectly assuming his disinterest was because he had a mountain of work to catch up on from being at the hotel all week without access to the hard copies of their client files. Sam got his first glimpse of what a truly annoyed girlfriend might look like when he gently rebuffed her attempts to get him off the couch and into the bedroom, promising he’d be in in a little while and watching her face darken before she finally gave up. He figured he’d make it up to her in the morning, and it really was an accident when he fell asleep on the couch with a manila folder under his face.

The call he’d been waiting for came mid-Sunday morning, waking the alpha with a start. He fumbled for the phone, still half asleep even as the sun was peeking through the blinds at him, and with horrible dry mouth and morning breath he answered and mumbled, “Yeah?”

“ _Uh...is this Sam Wesson?_ ” came the hesitant voice on the other end of the line. Sam recognized it, of course, had begun to have ridiculous fantasies over the course of the last week about that voice singing their children to sleep, and he sat bolt upright on the sofa.

“Yes,” he said instantly. “Yes, it is. Dean?”

“ _Yeah. Sorry to call you like this on a weekend but…_ ” There was a pause, then a long, deep sigh, then a muttered, “ _I’m out of toothpaste and bread. Do you think you could bring me some?_ ”

“Sure,” Sam said, again without any hesitation. “Yes, sure, I’d be happy to. Why don’t you make up a list and I’ll come pick it up and I can go grocery shopping for you?”

“ _You don’t...you don’t need to go to that much trouble_.”

“It’s no trouble. You heard my boss, it’s why I’m on this case. You’d actually be doing me a favor, making it look like I’m useful to them.”

“ _Okay. I’ll make a list then_.”

“Great! I’ll just jump in the shower and then I’ll be over in half an hour or so.”

“ _Sure._ ”

“Awesome. I’ll see you in a bit.”

Jess _really_ scowled when he apologized for bailing on her after his promise to do brunch, but she supposed it was okay when he was climbing the corporate ladder. The reporters were gone when Sam pulled into Dean’s driveway, though that wasn’t strange when a week had gone by since Walter Dixon’s death and Lily was grappling with the D.A. to try to get the charges dropped, so there wasn’t much to report, not even with whatever nonsense Nancy Grace was spitting across the nation. The neighbors were more of a problem now, multiple sets of eyes staring out their windows as Sam climbed out of his car. ‘Whore’ was spray-painted in big, black letters on the garage door, and it looked like someone had taken a baseball bat to the mailbox, then there were the growing piles of dog shit on the front lawn, like every pet owner in the vicinity were just walking onto Dean’s property so their pooch could take a dump. It all made Sam irrationally angry, which he tried to squelch before he scared their client more than he probably already was.

Dean opened the door just enough to say good morning and shove the shopping list at Sam, the tidal wave of anxiety that struck the alpha nearly knocking him off the front stoop. The irrational anger flared again that the man was stuck in his house being harassed, but Sam figured it was better to get to the grocery store and back quickly than try to do anything about Dean’s state of mind right then. It would be easier to get inside when he had his arms full of grocery bags as a solid excuse to be allowed past the threshold anyway. He’d head to Krogers and buy considerably more than was on the list, just to up the odds Dean would open the door, and maybe even impress him a little with how well Sam could provide for him. Though he knew he was being grossly unprofessional, Sam couldn’t help but feel like getting the omega to let him in, in more ways than one, was the most important thing he would ever do with his life.


	10. Then I Call My Mama to Help Me, and She Came Right Away

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have not been able to respond to more than a handful of comments because it is winter break and the neighbor's kids have been at my house all week.
> 
> All week, people.
> 
> ALL. WEEK.
> 
> Also, posts *might* go to once a week, just wrapped up a paid gig and have another one ready to start. My apologies in advance if I can't do Monday and Thursday or respond to all your wonderful comments. They still mean the world to me!

There were two cars in the driveway when Sam returned; a grey Honda Civic and a white, late model Toyota Camry with a license plate holder that read, “World’s Best Grandma.” It, therefore, wasn’t a total shock to have the door answered by an omega in her late fifties with big blue eyes and short, wispy blonde hair who must have been a looker in her day. Hints of orange blossoms and blueberries underneath her lavender hand lotion reached Sam’s nose, quelling his nervous energy as she pulled a light blue cardigan tightly around her middle.

“You must be Sam,” she said, giving a nod to the bags dangling at his sides. “Come on and bring those in. Dean’s in a session, should be out in a minute.”

“Thank you,” Sam said as he slid past her and she glanced around briefly to see if anyone was outside before closing the door. “I take it you’re Ms. Baker?”

“Millie, please,” she told him, heading quickly for the coffee table that was littered with potato chip bags so she could start throwing them into the garbage. The place had been set to rights and the fingerprint dust cleaned up, but it was somehow more of a mess. “The kitchen’s right through there, I’m sure you can figure out where everything goes if you look around. Not that I think Dean will care too much about things being out of place under the circumstances.”

“Sure,” he agreed, though he found his feet glued to the floor as he watched her pick up with quick, clipped movements. She had deep laugh lines and crow’s feet for someone relatively young, so obviously she was a woman who smiled a great deal, but looking at her now he’d have never believed it. “You said he was in a session?”

“With his therapist. Dean was barely holding it together when I got here, so I told him to just call and see if he could get a home appointment in spite of all the landmines on the front lawn.” After a few moments of feeling his eyes on her, she looked up and ordered, “Well, go on. Make yourself useful putting things away, since your firm isn’t good for anything else.”

“Excuse me?”

Sam hadn’t meant to sound so put out when she was undoubtedly under a good deal of stress with what her son was going through, but it drew a deep sigh out of her anyway as her shoulders sagged.

“I’m sorry,” she said at last. She had such a lovely motherly quality to her voice that it made Sam wish his mom hadn’t always said being a mother was the least useful thing an omega could do. “I’ve been on the road for the last three hours, and then I get here and my grandchild is gone and my baby’s wearing a damned collar…” She swiped at her eyes and huffed out a breath, and Sam definitely saw the resemblance. “Someone from your office should have called me.”

“We weren’t authorized,” Sam said, shrugging helplessly when she glared at him. “Attorney-client privilege, and he never asked us to.”

“Yes, well. _Someone_ should have called me anyway. He’s all alone out here except for that manager of his who fired him, and Lizzie’s babysitter, now that Walter…” Her shoulders sagged even further as she stared at the bags in her hands, looking lost. “He was so good to Dean.”

“Dean told us he was acting like he was possessed or something,” Sam offered, mostly to distract from the flare of jealousy in his chest at how genuinely sad Dean’s mother was about Walter Dixon being dead.

“Did he?” she asked quietly before turning back to her cleaning. “He’d know, considering who his father was.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t think he knew his father. They had me look into his background when we took the case…”

“He didn’t. His dad was a hunter, one of the best in the country. An old friend, too. A good friend. There wasn’t ever anything serious between us, but when I told John that I was carrying - he was working a werewolf case at the time - he said he’d come right out as soon as he was done but...werewolves are fast, especially when you’re hunting alone and there are more than you were expecting. He had a friend up in South Dakota, John mentioned my situation before he took the case, and after it was all over he sent me John’s journal. It had everything he ever learned about all the things he hunted. Dean used to read it every day when he was a kid, and everything else he could get his hands on that dealt with monsters. He had John’s notes memorized. Always told me he was going to be a hunter when he grew up, but then he presented, and...his goals changed, is the nicest way to say it, I guess. Hunting is an alpha’s world and he didn’t want anything to do with alphas. I won’t lie and say I wasn’t relieved. No mother wants their child out there hunting down things that’ll kill them as soon as look at them, but he’s still pretty perceptive when something happens that doesn’t seem natural.”

“South Dakota?” Sam asked, struggling to process the idea that Dean’s father was a hunter and what the odds were that Bobby Singer might know this ‘John.’

“Mr. Wesson doesn’t need my life story, Mom,” Dean said from the hallway where he was running his hands through his hair. He was barefoot in a pair of jeans and a baggy sweatshirt, the faintest hints of peach cobbler wafting over to the alpha and making his mouth water. 

Dean looked awful and beautiful at the same time. Sam wasn’t sure how he managed it, though he was glad he did. The tension was gone from his shoulders, as were the little lines threatening to turn into crow’s feet, but the dark circles under the omega’s eyes and the gaunt lines of his face clawed at something primal deep within Sam’s brain. He was grateful the ten bags of groceries he hadn’t managed to get to the kitchen were giving him something to focus on.

“It’s Sam,” Sam reminded him with a smile. “Mr. Wesson is my father.”

“Sam.” 

It was stunning how the omega could make a single syllable sound like a thousand doors slamming shut and Sam’s smile faltered. Clearly, they’d done some backsliding in the comfort department since Friday. Sam hadn’t a clue how to fix that when he wasn’t sure why it was happening.

“Sorry I couldn’t stay longer, Dean.” 

An extremely slender man with mousy brown hair and a rather beak-like nose made his way out of the same room Dean came from, slinging a duffel bag over his shoulder, before Sam could think anymore about it. Though he was clearly a beta, hints of bergamot and chamomile wafted around him, along with the faint trace of smoke and candle wax. He looked to be about Dean’s age and was just a little shorter, but with his skinny frame the omega could probably snap him like a twig if need be. That did nothing to calm down Sam’s quietly growling inner wolf as the man walked right up to his client and started stroking his arm.

“That’s okay,” Dean murmured, his mouth almost twitching up into a grin at the beta’s gentle touch. “I appreciate you coming out on a Sunday. I know it’s outside your normal schedule.”

“Well, you needed help,” the man replied. “And you’re still in rough shape. If you need me back here, just call. I can work something out.”

“Thanks.”

“Hi,” Sam interjected, hoping the irritation coursing through him wasn’t bleeding into his expression. “I’m Sam Wesson. And you are?”

“Garth Fitzgerald,” the man said pleasantly, holding out a hand to shake. When Sam gripped it with more force than was probably necessary, Garth simply closed his other hand around the alpha’s and squeezed warmly. “I’m Dean’s contact therapist. You must be the young guy on his legal team.”

“Yeah.” Sam managed not to preen at the knowledge Dean had mentioned him, but just barely. “Dean said he saw you twice the week before Walter died?”

“He did. Poor Walter. I always thought he was one of the good ones.” The beta sighed heavily, relinquishing Sam’s hand as he shook his head. “Such a shame. Dean said your team might want to talk to me.”

“We will,” Sam confirmed. “Ms. Sunder and Ms. Benchley are working on getting the case dropped, but on the off chance this goes to trial we want to have as full a picture of Dean to present to the jury as possible.”

“Well, I’m happy to do anything I can to help him out. Our mutual client is a great guy. But I probably don’t have to tell you that.”

The way he smiled and winked left Sam unsure of how to react, as if he were being invited into some kind of secret Dean Smith fan club with the omega standing only feet away. Sam certainly wouldn’t have minded joining a secret Dean Smith fan club, only the way Dean frowned made it clear he shouldn’t expect any autographed tee shirts anytime soon. 

“Anyway, like I was saying, I really appreciate you coming over,” Dean said, his hand between Garth’s shoulder blades to steer him towards the front door. “And I promise to call if I need you again.”

“You’d better. You should have called last week. I would have come down to that fancy hotel they had you stayin’ in. You can’t just let yourself go like that. You got anything scheduled with Missouri?”

“I was gonna play it by ear.”

“Dean.” For such a frail man, Garth could look surprisingly stern, and Sam didn’t even try to hide his curiosity as the beta turned in the doorway to massage Dean’s biceps. “There’s no shame in needing help. Not after what’s happened. Promise you’ll call her.”

“Fine,” Dean grumbled, allowing himself to be pulled into a long hug that left Sam both completely shocked and deeply jealous.

“Good.” Garth released him, looking back and waving. “See you later, Ms. Baker. Sam.”

He was gone with a short nod to them both, Dean leaning against the door for a moment once it was closed. The faintest trace of anxiety drifted across the room but disappeared quickly, the omega turning to Sam and his mother with determination. 

“Thanks for the groceries Sam,” he said, his hand still on the doorknob like he was about to open it again and bodily throw Sam out onto the poop-covered lawn. “I won’t keep you from the rest of your day.”

“You’re welcome,” Sam said as he tried to figure out some way to shove his foot in the metaphorical door being slammed in his face. “I don’t have anything planned so it’s really no problem. Actually, I wanted to talk to you anyway about what happened with Walter.”

“There isn’t really anything else to tell.” Despite the obvious return of the tension in his shoulders, Dean marched across the living room to the kitchen with a confidence he clearly didn’t feel, going by the second burst of anxiety in his scent. “I’d really rather not go through it again if you don’t mind.”

“I kind of do. See, you’re going to have to repeat this story to the police when my bosses set up your interview this week, and then you’re probably going to have to repeat it again to those officers’ bosses, and then maybe the D.A., and then maybe a jury, if we can’t get the case dismissed outright…”

“Okay, fine, you’ve made your point.” If it was possible, Dean was even more enchanting when he was bristly, and Sam swallowed down a possessive growl. “I’ll help you put the groceries away and I’ll answer whatever questions you have. Mom, for god’s sake, stop cleaning, and just relax!”

“I’ll relax when you get me some Lysol so I can get all the potato chip crumbs off the coffee table. You know how much I hate having crumbs everywhere.”

“Yes ma’am.”

Were Sam allowed to laugh he would have, but he could tell he hadn’t really made any headway with his client yet today and didn’t want any more walls going up between them. Dean gave a jerk of his head as he went to retrieve the cleaning supplies from under the kitchen sink so Sam would follow from where he’d ended up near the hall, which he happily did while trying not to look like a puppy wagging its tail. Dean grabbed a roll of paper towels and a spray bottle, the curve of his ass as he leaned over too perfect for Sam to ignore, and he barely managed to contain a whimper and avert his eyes before Dean was headed back out to the living room. It crossed Sam’s mind for the first time that keeping his hands to himself just might kill him, and he considered calling his doctor to talk about some long term suppressants.

Sam had the dairy and produce put away when the omega returned and grabbed the bags that had dry goods and cereal so he could open the cupboards and use them as a shield. Sam wondered if Dean knew how obvious he was being in his attempts to avoid looking at him and hoped he didn’t notice the way his sweatshirt rode up every time he lifted a box above his head. The little strip of creamy, freckled skin that peeked out on the omega’s back was going to fuel a lot of Sam’s fantasies as long as he was on this case, regardless of his new couplehood with Jess, something he refused to think deeply about.

“So what is it you need me to repeat?” Dean asked brusquely, his neck and cheeks pinking as Sam came over to help put things away.

“You said it was like he was possessed,” Sam replied. “Based on everything else you said before, and especially now that your mom’s told me what your dad did, I get the feeling you weren’t being figurative.”

“Maybe I wasn’t. What does that matter? Lily already said it wouldn’t help.”

“But Tara thinks it will, and so do I.” That got Dean’s attention focused on him, and lord but those eyes were pretty. Sam almost lost his train of thought for a moment before he pressed on. “I meant it before about talking to my grandfather and seeing if he could put me in touch with someone at the FDH. What if Walter really _was_ possessed, or he was something that only _looked_ like Walter?”

Dean’s pretty, pretty eyes were really focused on him now, big jade orbs with rapidly blinking fans of lashes, his plush pink lips slightly parted in shock. For a few too-short moments Sam thought he might get a chance to kiss those lips with the way the omega flushed, then his mother was storming into the kitchen with the full garbage bag, declaring, “That was disgusting, Dean. I know you’re worried sick about Lizzie, but you cannot let your house become a pigsty. You’d never get her back if a social worker stopped by and saw the state of that coffee table.”

“Sorry Mom,” Dean muttered, looking downright sheepish as she moved to take the garbage out the back. 

“Is Sam staying for lunch?” she asked as she went. “You look like you haven’t eaten properly in days.”

“I’m sure Sam’s got other stuff to do…”

“Nonsense.” She closed the door behind her and moved between them to get to the sink and wash her hands. “He already said he doesn’t. Why don’t you go talk in the living room and I’ll make you some sandwiches?”

“I can make sandwiches Mom.”

“Now that Sam’s brought you everything to make them with. The least you can do is feed him as a thank you.”

“He’s one of my lawyers. He’s legally obligated to get me groceries.”

“All the more reason not to take advantage of him. I swear you’ve lost all your manners.”

Dean rolled his eyes but looked appropriately rebuffed and headed back into the living room with Sam on his heels. There was enough irritation souring his scent that Sam kept a respectable distance, sitting in the recliner instead of on the sofa next to Dean. The coffee table smelled all lemony fresh and Sam got the sense that this is how the omega normally liked the place based on how _right_ Dean looked in a well-kept home.

“So you think that there really is something supernatural going on,” Dean said quietly as his mother puttered around the kitchen pulling down plates and getting a mini assembly line set up on the island. “How are you going to prove it?”

“Well, for starters, I’ve already spoken with my grandfather and he’s given me a contact at the FDH. A researcher, the best of the best, apparently.”

“And you think this researcher is going to want to help me out, just out of the kindness of their heart?”

“I already spoke to him as a matter of fact, and yes, he’s willing. But he needed me to ask you some questions.”

“Like?”

“Sam, what do you want on your sandwich?” Millie asked, breaking the tension between them as she came to the doorway between the living room and the dining room. “Lettuce, tomato, mayo?”

“Lettuce, tomato, mustard, please,” Sam replied, eager to demonstrate his own manners as she disappeared again. “So was there anything you left out about that night? Did you notice anything strange about Walter, other than him being distant? Did he use any languages you didn’t think he spoke, like Latin, maybe? You said his eyes were almost black. Were they reflective or did he smell different…”

“You really did talk to someone, I guess,” Dean said wryly, scratching idly along the edge of the collar. “It wasn’t a shifter or a ghoul for starters. They’d both have gotten back up, but it was Walter’s body they found. I said he was possessed because he was. I don’t know how I missed it in the car or at dinner, maybe it was the blockers, but when he had me up against the bookcase he smelled like sulfur.”

“Okay then. I’ll circle back around with Bobby and see what he thinks.”

“Bobby? Singer?”

Sam apparently had been right to suspect the hunter Millie knew in South Dakota was the same one on the Department’s payroll, though he couldn’t understand why Dean looked sick. From what his mother said, Dean hadn’t been involved with hunting or ever known anything about his father beyond the journal.

“Yeah,” Sam said carefully, watching Dean turn even more green. “Why?”

“You didn’t tell him the case was for me, did you?” Dean asked, twisting his hands together as whatever relaxation Garth brought him in their licensed cuddle session quickly vanished.

“No, that’s privileged information,” Sam replied. “I kept your name and the gorier details out of it. Why? Is that a problem?”

“It’s just...he knew my dad, and the hunting community’s pretty close-knit. I don’t really want all of this getting spread around. It would ruin my dad’s reputation.”

“Dean…” Before he could second-guess himself, Sam reached across the coffee table and grabbed Dean’s hands to stop him from breaking his fingers. The omega stilled but didn’t look up at him. “Maybe it’s time to stop worrying about everyone else’s reputation and focus on yourself.”

“No point in that,” Dean scoffed, jerking his hands free like he’d been scalded. “People with solid reputations don’t have to change their names to avoid embarrassing Internet searches.”

“What happened to you was not your fault.”

If Sam thought Dean was closing himself off quickly before, he realized how wrong he was when wall after wall slammed into place between them, Dean’s gaze growing distant as a veil of disinterest dropped over his face.

“And what happens if there _was_ something wrong with Walter?” he asked, pointedly changing the subject.

“Then I’ll do some more digging,” Sam said. “We’ll call in the FDH for help if we have to.” 

“And if you land on something’s trail but the FDH wants nothing to do with it? Are you going to hunt it down yourself?”

“Maybe.”

Something flickered across Dean’s face that Sam couldn’t analyze before it disappeared, but he thought it looked like concern. Given the omega’s history and how frigid he’d been ten minutes ago, Sam’s inner wolf couldn’t help but howl just a little at the thought Dean was worried about him going after whatever made Walter attack.

“Sam, sulfur means demons. If we’re dealing with a demon, and if the FDH isn’t interested, it’d be best to just let it go,” Dean said firmly. “You need to understand that going in. If the professionals don’t want it, leave it alone.”

“I don’t know if I can do that. Whatever got a hold of Walter has ruined your life, Dean.”

“Yeah, it has, but why do you care?”

“Sandwiches,” Millie announced, bringing them each a plate complete with pickle and chips. “I’ll let you boys eat. Give a shout if you need something honey.”

The look she threw Sam’s way as she headed for the bedrooms gave him the distinct impression that she had at least an ice pick in her overnight bag, and despite how friendly she’d been, he’d better watch his p’s and q’s when it came to being alone with her little boy. Sam didn’t really blame her after everything he read in Dean’s history, but he was sorry that the sweet lady who’d answered the door felt the need to casually instill the fear of God in anyone left alone with Dean. The way Dean’s ears flushed while the corners of his mouth turned down confirmed Sam’s suspicion that this wasn’t the first time she’d given someone that look.

“She’s a little overprotective,” Dean explained to the roast beef sandwich on his plate as he picked at his chips. Sam hummed in acceptance, enjoying the crunch of the lettuce and juice of the tomato, when Dean gave him a sideways glance and said, “You need to know that you’re not going to get anywhere.”

“What?” Sam said around a mouthful of ham and swiss. 

“This whole white knight routine.” The omega tipped his face up enough to look square at the taller man, his expression completely closed off. “It’s great that you want to help me, but if you think this is gonna end up with anything other than a ‘thank you’ and a solid recommendation for your firm, it’s not. I know I told you this before, but I want to be crystal clear. I don’t talk to alphas, I don’t date alphas, and I sure as hell don’t sleep with alphas.”

“You have, though,” Sam objected, feeling an uncomfortable pang in his chest at the idea that after this case was cleared up he’d probably never see Dean Smith again. “Talked to alphas, I mean. There was Walter, and your friend Benny…”

“Who were exceptions to the rule.”

“Meaning?”

“They never sucked up to me so they could get in my pants.”

“That’s not...dude, you _know_ I’m seeing someone already so don’t worry about it.”

“Good.”

The finality with which Dean spoke made it all but impossible for Sam to swallow his food around the lump in his throat. No matter how hard he tried to convince himself that he didn’t care, he failed miserably.


	11. Out There the Law’s A-Comin’, I’m Getting So Tired of Runnin’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank all the gods, winter break is over.

Sam finished half the sandwich and a handful of chips before making an excuse about needing to pick up his dry cleaning and telling Dean to call if he needed anything else before speeding back home. A childish, petty part of him wanted to forget all about trying to figure out what kind of demon might have been possessing Walter Dixon, especially after Jess came over to watch a movie and decided to try sucking Sam’s brains out through his dick. When he’d recovered from momentarily whiting out he thanked her properly through several orgasms, the refrain of ‘who needs Dean Smith’ running through his mind the entire time. 

By Monday though, he’d recovered from his little snit enough to remind himself that none of this was about him. He was just along for the ride as their client’s life was systematically destroyed by the Indianapolis Police Department and the D.A.’s office, and while he might like to take things personally, he really couldn’t. It was a good thing, too, because Millie called to ask if he could arrange for Dean to go to a doctor’s appointment on Wednesday. It was well outside the collar’s range, and while her son insisted he’d just reschedule, it was with his Om-OB/GYN and she wasn’t about to let him put it off. She didn’t say why she was so adamant he went, and Sam didn’t push, but it didn’t take a rocket scientist to deduce that there was no telling what kind of medical needs Dean was left with after being gang-raped when he presented. 

Lily was glad to know Sam spoke with their client and planned to take him to his doctor on Wednesday since she’d finally set the interview with the police for Thursday and she wanted to have a chance to prep Dean beforehand. She was also more agreeable than he expected to the idea of him chasing down a potential demon lead now that he was in contact with someone at the FDH. She still expected they could get everything dismissed with all the video evidence of Dean’s injuries at the time of his arrest ( _even his mug shot would work in their favor_ ), and they were trying to track down the cab driver who picked him up a few blocks from Dixon’s house, but it never hurt to have a Plan B.

Bobby Singer was surprised to hear back from him so quickly, muttering to himself as Sam confirmed that Dean smelled sulfur and “the victim’s” eyes were black. It was hard to stay vague about the case when Singer needed to know if the vic had been anywhere outside their normal routine or done anything unusual. Sam reluctantly mentioned the Japanese businessman, hoping the beta didn’t have cable news to put all the pieces together, but Bobby just muttered some more and said he’d look through a few of his books and get back to Sam once he had an idea of what they might be dealing with. In the meantime, he tasked the young lawyer with seeing if there were any similar cases to Dean’s that might show a pattern. It would help Bobby narrow things down and probably give Sam’s team stronger legs to stand on when arguing the supernatural angle to a court of law.

By the time the office closed on Tuesday, Sam had a stack of literature in a manila folder tucked under his arm detailing the monsters and creatures that could control minds or mimic someone’s appearance. There were sirens who could poison people into hurting and killing those closest to them; ghouls who took on the shape of the dead; ghosts who could possess living bodies if angered enough; and then of course any number of lesser pagan gods who were powerful enough to make humans do pretty much whatever they wanted. Despite knowing they were probably after a demon, Sam couldn’t help diving down the research rabbit hole once he started looking at the various paranormal cases that were documented in and around Indiana in the past few years. If the demon angle didn’t pan out, he had a whole list of other options to discuss with Bobby so he wouldn’t sound so completely out of his element. He could understand why Dean had considered becoming a hunter after reading his father’s journal. Though he wouldn’t have a clue how to handle himself if he actually ran into an angry spirit, Sam was definitely fascinated by the prospect.

Nothing had improved with Dean when Sam knocked on his door at nine o’clock Wednesday morning. If anything, their relationship had devolved to the point where the omega didn’t do more than grunt, “Thanks,” when he answered, ducking outside and heading swiftly towards Sam’s car with his head bent low. “Whore” was washed off the garage door, replaced by “Slut” and “Liar” in the same black block spray paint. Millie’s car was gone from the driveway, undoubtedly moved into the garage to keep it safe from vandalism, and Sam didn’t miss the way the neighbors across the street were glaring at them as Dean slid into the passenger seat. At least the media still had something better to do with their time and weren’t clogging the driveway.

Dean remained tight-lipped the entire drive to his doctor’s office, the oppressive silence underscored every now and then by a swell of embarrassment souring the air. Whether it was because of the slurs scrawled across his house, the type of doctor Sam was driving him to, or something else completely the alpha had no way of knowing, but he made a concerted effort _not_ to send out soothing pheromones. It was easier to tamp down on the instinctive reaction now that his rut had passed, though it left Sam feeling empty, like he was failing in something fundamental. If Dean appreciated it, he didn’t say.

Even so, things were fine until they actually arrived at the office and Sam was barred from accompanying Dean into the back where the exam rooms were. It made sense, of course. Alphas by law were not allowed beyond the waiting area of an omega clinic if they weren’t mated to a patient without that patient’s express consent. It was one of the few protective laws in place nationwide to ensure unmated carrying omegas couldn’t be pressured into terminating a pregnancy, and while Sam understood the importance of the law it brought a potential problem if Dean wouldn’t agree to let him come along. It was likely more than one hundred feet from the lobby to the exam suite, but before he could bring it up, Dean said, “This’ll probably take about an hour,” before leaving Sam standing by the entryway to sign in at the receptionist’s desk. 

Completely out of his depth in an Om-OB/GYN’s office, the alpha made his way to one of the many pale blue sofas among all the single armchairs and picked up a copy of _Omega’s Home Journal_. He quickly put it down as soon as he realized what he was doing, smiling at the other omegas in the waiting room who were all looking at him like he’d been dropped into their lives from an alien planet. It didn’t help his plight that instead of joining him on the sofa, Dean instead decided to sit on the far side of the room with a clipboard and some papers, tugging his scarf a little higher around his neck when the collar threatened to show.

Fifteen minutes later the nurse practitioner came to call Dean in for his exam, and Sam hadn’t yet come up with a way to break the ice with him. He found it hard to believe the omega thought _Family Circle_ was as fascinating as he apparently did, only Dean snatched it up off the end table next to his chair and immediately became engrossed in whatever the March issue had to say about St. Patrick’s Day activities for kids in a clear signal that he didn’t plan on talking to anyone. When he heard his name, Dean darted for the back of the clinic like hellhounds were on his heels, and Sam could only hope everything went smoothly during his appointment.

Everything did not go smoothly, of course, because Dean Smith’s life was rapidly collapsing. For a grand total of twenty-seven minutes, it seemed like there wouldn’t be a problem with however much distance was between Sam and his client, then a pair of Indianapolis’ finest walked in, surveyed the waiting area, and headed directly for the receptionist. Sam could scent the irritation rolling off the tall one from across the room, and they didn’t even attempt to keep their voices down when they barked out Dean’s name.

Sam was on his feet immediately as the poor receptionist tried to explain that Dean was in with his doctor and the police weren’t allowed in the back of the clinic, demanding as he crossed the floor to them, “Is there a problem, officers?”

The men looked familiar, but Sam couldn’t place them, and the taller one ( _his name tag read “Britton”_ ) said, “Nothing to be worried about, sir, we just need to take in an omega violating his conditional release.”

“If you mean Dean Smith, then you should know I’m his attorney,” Sam told them, the smaller, younger officer clearly wavering in his surety that they were doing the right thing at hearing the news.

“Well, _as_ his attorney, _you_ should know he needs to stay within one hundred feet of you at all times if he’s outside the mile radius allowed by his collar,” Britton growled, all traces of a keeper of the peace vanishing immediately in the face of Dean’s legal counsel. “The monitor went off so we’re here to take him in.”

“We’re in an omega clinic,” Sam snapped, drawing himself up to his full height. The receptionist looked like she was about to faint with two alphas posturing in the lobby. “I’m not with him because I can’t go into the exam rooms when I’m not mated to a patient, and neither can you.”

“I can do anything I damn well please to apprehend a fugitive.”

“Fugitive? What, you think he’s going to run out the back or something? You’ve got his _kid_. He’s going to finish his appointment, come back out here, and then I’m going to take him to our office to meet with his defense team.”

“The only place he’s going is a city holding cell.”

Britton moved to pass him, and while it was admittedly a bad idea to grab the man’s arm, Sam thought it was a bit much when the smaller officer ( _“Linus” per the tag on his right lapel_ ) pressed a stun gun to his neck long enough to have his knees buckling. Fortunately, the receptionist and administrative staff were serious about keeping the police out of the back of the clinic. While the four beta females were ultimately no match for the two officers, their delay of the alphas gave Sam time to recover and rush past them into the back himself, ignoring all the shouts for him to stop.

Though he was slowed by the after-effects of the stun gun, Sam had the advantage of knowing exactly what Dean smelled like, so he didn’t have to stop to bully one of the nurses into telling him which room his client was the way Britton and Linus did. The odds of them making it out of the clinic without getting arrested grew slimmer by the second, and he figured the least he could do was make sure the omega wasn’t in a compromised position when the police arrived to throw him in handcuffs. He doubted Dean would immediately appreciate his efforts when he found the right exam room and heard a female voice saying, “There are some new therapies I’d like to try with you,” but Sam didn’t let that stop him from bursting through the door.

Sam took little notice of Dean sitting on an exam table in a paper gown, or the golden-haired doctor sitting in a wheeled chair in front of him as he looked for his client’s clothes. They were folded neatly on a chair beside the door, and as the doctor was sputtering at him, Sam grabbed them and tossed them carelessly in Dean’s direction before checking to see if the door could be locked. 

“What the hell!” Dean snapped as Sam discovered there was no way to lock the door and pulled a chair over to shove under the handle.

“Put your pants on, please,” Sam said quickly. “You’ve been more than one hundred feet from me for the last half hour and there are two cops here to take you in for violating the terms of your release.”

“What?” the doctor demanded, fury in her wide, aquamarine eyes. “That’s absurd! No one is allowed back here but patients!”

“I told them that, they weren’t real keen on listening,” Sam assured her, staggering forward from where he’d pressed himself against the door as there was a loud bang from the other side and the handle shook. He was off balance enough he nearly fell into Dean as the omega was zipping up his jeans and reaching for his shirt, then a moment later the door flew open and Britton and Linus were there with their guns drawn.

“Dean Smith, you’re under arrest for violating the conditions of your bond,” Britton barked, growling when the doctor stepped in front of both Dean _and_ Sam. “Ma’am, I’m going to need you to step out of the way or I’ll have to arrest you, too.”

“Then arrest me,” she barked back. “I’m the head of this clinic and Dean Smith is my patient. I’m not going to allow you to storm in here waving guns in our faces or drag him out of here half naked!”

“It’s all right, Dr. Daniels,” Dean insisted as he yanked his henley quickly over his head. The extra burst of scent that drifted in Sam’s direction made it difficult for the alpha to concentrate for a second.

“It’s not all right, there are laws in place for a reason, Dean! These two have probably terrorized half of our patients!”

“My client is more than willing to surrender to your custody as long as you give him a chance to finish getting dressed,” Sam said before the doctor could make matters worse. She may have been in the right, but the two beat cops in front of them obviously weren’t going to be moved by anything she said.

“Willing to surrender?” Dean hissed, stilling when Sam shot a glare over his shoulder.

“Shut up and put your shoes on,” Sam hissed back, startled when suddenly Dr. Daniels was shoved out of the way and he felt the stun gun against his neck again. He yelped, falling into the exam table as Dean shouted something he couldn’t make out, then he was being spun around until he was face down with his hands being cuffed behind his back.

“You think you’re a tough guy, do ya, pup?” Britton snarled as he hauled Sam back up to his feet. Blearily he noticed Dean up against the far wall of the room, Linus cuffing him as well as the omega’s muscles strained against him. “You just bought yourself a one-way ticket to a holding cell for obstructing a police officer. Hope his ass is worth it.”

Sam was still disoriented as they shoved him into the back of their police cruiser, though at least he was next to Dean and could reassure himself his client was all right. The omega had managed to get the henley on, and though his jeans were still unbuttoned he’d finished with the zipper before they burst in. He was shivering slightly, curling and uncurling his toes against the footwell since they hadn’t let him grab his shoes, and he sat glaring straight ahead with his mouth clamped firmly shut the entire ride to the station.

With Sam by his side, the Indianapolis P.D. didn’t try to jerk Dean around, for which he was profoundly grateful even if he didn’t plan on saying anything that might be used against them. He’d been ready to stab his lawyer with the speculum when the young alpha simply burst into his exam room while he was sitting there bare assed on the exam table, but he had to admit as they sat handcuffed side-by-side that it was definitely better to get arrested without any socks or shoes than it would have been to get arrested without any underwear or pants. He didn’t get strip searched or fingerprinted again ( _though Sam did_ ), and when they put him into his holding cell they didn’t give him a cellmate. It was eye-opening how differently they treated him when he had a witness handy to object to any mistreatment, and the bitterness he felt at this discovery went a long way towards offsetting any lingering mortification from nearly being caught by the police with his pants quite literally down.

At least Sam wasn’t pushing him to talk or sending out any of those damned pheromones, which was a pleasant surprise no matter how much Dean might have liked to have some soothing citrus wafting his way through the bars of their adjoining holding cells. Sam was in with five other alphas, all of whom were sizing Dean up and licking their chops, so the younger man had his hands full with growling and posturing anyway. Dean didn’t want to find that charming, but he did, too focused on keeping his impending panic in check to control all of his emotions. Dr. Daniels hadn’t even had a chance to finish his exam, and if he couldn’t get back to her to re-check his hormone levels she couldn’t refill the prescriptions that had kept him somewhat regulated and stable for the past decade. He was only getting an extra month on them before they’d need to figure something else out, but that was better than going without them cold turkey.

“I don’t know if they’re going to try to get you into an interrogation room,” Sam said suddenly, shocking Dean out of his spiraling thoughts of just how badly things might go if they insisted on revoking his bond. “But you know not to say anything unless Lily or Tara is present, right?”

“Yeah, I know,” Dean replied, managing not to sound snippy. “Not my first rodeo, but I...uh...I appreciate the reminder.” When Sam didn’t push any further, Dean added finally, “Also coming to warn me. You didn’t have to do that, get yourself arrested and everything.”

“What are you talking about? Of course I did. I was in the same building with you and they were breaking federal law by going into the back to get you. I know you’re not completely comfortable with sending me out to buy paper towels, but I’m your lawyer. It’s my job to protect you.”

Dean let that sink in for a moment, bristling at how warm the thought made him feel before saying, “I’m not used to that. I’ve always had to protect myself, y’know? I mean Benny and Lisa would, and my old tour manager was pretty good about making sure she had my back, but it’s just been me for a while now.”

“What about Walter?”

“He tried. Wanted to help me more than I let him, but the stuff he wrote into the contract that went against the standard Ts and Cs was already pushing things. I didn’t want the lines getting blurred any further. There was only so much he could do when we weren’t mated, anyway.”

“Would you have wanted that from him if he’d been able to give it to you?”

“I don’t know.” It was probably a really terrible idea, talking to Sam about all this when there were other people in the holding cell who could overhear their conversation, but it was nice to have someone listening to him besides his mother or Dr. Moseley, who he _really_ should call to set up an appointment. “I’m really not the mating kind, Sam. I don’t have a whole lot to offer anyone.”

“Yeah.” The alpha sounded almost wistful, and Dean had to force himself to stare at his hands and not his lawyer. “I don’t think I’m the mating kind either.”

“Your girlfriend know that?” Dean chuckled, glancing over when he heard Sam laughing as well just to watch his dimples pop. He couldn’t pinpoint when he’d first noticed the dimples and refused to think about how long ago he realized he liked them.

“It’s a pretty new relationship,” Sam replied with a sigh. “There hasn’t been a reason to talk about anything long term. Though she mentioned meeting my grandfather when he was in town this weekend to tell me about your mutual friend, Mr. Singer, and that was...weirdly forward.”

Dean hummed in response, thinking he should probably correct Sam’s presumption that he and Bobby Singer were friends when he’d never actually met the man, but he let it slide. There was too much running through his head for him to waste time on a technicality, first and foremost the knowledge that Sam wasn’t too keen on the girlfriend meeting his family just yet. He was glad all at once for the predicament he found himself in because it allowed him to focus on just how screwed he probably was instead of how happy it made him that The Screamer, as he’d dubbed Sam’s beta, might not be a permanent fixture in his life. It was probably just a sense of satisfaction that he _could_ trust his lawyer to come running after all if Dean needed him, and certainly not relief that someone who smelled as good as Sam wasn’t going to waste his life with a woman who couldn’t scent him. No, that had nothing to do with it at all.


	12. Hey, She’s My Lawyer When I’m in Trouble

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Posts going to once a week for a little bit while I work on a gaming contract.

The bail hearing Wednesday afternoon was a disaster. Tara came to represent them, but the judge - some prick named Styne - wasn’t interested in anything she had to say. He made it a point to explain how dim a view he took of omegas who claimed Chastity’s Law and then flagrantly disobeyed the conditions of their release, and with a single gavel stroke he ordered both Dean and his goodie two-shoes lawyer be remanded to state custody until their arraignment on Friday. 

Two days in the county jail didn’t put either Sam or Dean in a very good mood for said arraignment. Lily had been able to pull some strings and get them placed in the same cell when she found out the city had no intention of housing Dean anywhere other than among the general population, which she didn’t have time to appeal. At least he didn’t have to wear the damned collar like a giant ‘jump me’ sign, and the prison was required to supply him with industrial grade scent blockers, so he supposed it could have been worse.

It was a miracle they weren’t in fights every second with all the aggression rolling off of Sam every time anyone so much as glanced in Dean’s direction, which the omega would quietly admit to himself was very reassuring. He was so busy focusing on keeping his scent completely clamped down he wasn’t able to focus on anything else, like reminding himself he didn’t trust alphas. It had been too long since he got his brown belt in Judo, and when Lizzie came along he couldn’t train the way he used to, hence whatever Sam could do to keep the other inmates away was a-okay in Dean’s book. 

Also a-okay was how Sam consistently filled their cell with soothing pheromones after lights out. He’d given Dean the top bunk, so at night when the other alpha scents threatened to overwhelm him in the dark, Sam’s cedar and citrus would waft up from the mattress underneath him and surround Dean like a cocoon. He was certain his lawyer was doing it on purpose this time, but he wasn’t going to call him out on it. With the real danger of having his bond revoked and finding himself in prison until they decided to get around to trying him, Dean welcomed anything Sam wanted to do to calm him down - within reason, of course. Even if Dean _did_ find it difficult not to crawl into Sam’s bunk Thursday night and explain how Garth let him be the big spoon when he was really worked up and needed contact, he refused to give in to his whining inner wolf.

Despite Sam’s nightly pheromone treatments, Dean didn’t have any idea where the two of them stood, and realized with some dismay that he didn’t like it. While it was true Sam was a constant presence at his elbow, they hadn’t really talked at all since meeting with Lily when she told them to keep their heads down and mouths shut. Dean had to wonder if the only reason Sam was trying to soothe him was to stop his anxiety from keeping them both up all night. It all left Dean thinking maybe some of Sam’s aggression was aimed at him for getting the two of them into such a mess. Logically he knew it wasn’t his fault, but he didn’t really know his lawyer well enough to be sure Sam understood that. He shouldn’t care, and he couldn’t help it, and it put him off balance going into the hearing about whether he’d get slapped back into the tracking collar or handcuffs, making it impossible to keep random bursts of panic out of his scent, no matter how good his game face was.

The arraignment was set for ten o’clock, and Dean really wished they didn’t have to show up in matching orange jumpsuits. If he’d learned anything from his days on the road with Benny, it was that appearances mattered, and it would be easier for the judge to see him as a person if he didn’t look like an inmate, but there was nothing to be done about it. Lily and Tara brought suits with them for both him and Sam, only a “mix up” at the prison meant they left late and didn’t make it to the courthouse in time for them to change. The resulting fury etched into his lawyers’ faces when they finally arrived at the holding cells was something to behold.

“We got Judge Turner,” Lily explained in the few brief minutes she had to confer with them before they were all moved into the courtroom. “If he asks you anything, just answer honestly. He’s tough, but fair, and he doesn’t like cops who ignore the law.”

“I’m surprised the prosecution didn’t try to get the case moved to another judge,” Sam said, his voice rough from two days of disuse.

“Oh, they did,” Tara told them. “Turner wasn’t having any of it, though, after he found out Styne sent an omega into a men’s prison.”

“Tough but fair,” Lily reiterated to their client. “I think it actually hurt their case. The D.A. is handling this himself, probably hoping to make an example out of you. My gut tells me that will work against him, too. If he didn’t want this to look like some kind of vendetta aimed at you, he should have let one of his underlings handle it. Taking this on personally when you’re not a flight risk reeks of malicious prosecution. Also, you should know that your mothers are in the gallery.”

As reassuring as that all was, Dean couldn’t do much more than nod as the bailiff came for them, shackling their hands to their feet so both he and Sam got to practice the little half-shuffle-limp they hadn’t quite gotten down pat on Wednesday walking into the jail. The alpha was back to playing the strong, silent type looming behind him like some kind of avenging angel, and Dean wasn’t sure who Sam wanted to punish. He was profoundly grateful for the hand Lily laid on his forearm and the way her thumb swept over his skin, though he held back from leaning into the touch as the bailiff moved him towards the defense counsel table. He managed to wave at his mother where she was sitting in the same row as another blonde woman who was staring at Sam. Sam raised a hand in her direction and ended up in the gallery with Tara directly behind Dean, his calming scent rolling off him towards both omegas. Lily shot a glare over her shoulder at him, but he merely shrugged and continued doing the only thing he could to keep their client calm.

Judge Turner was an austere, middle-aged black man with a neatly trimmed mustache, close-cropped hair, and expression that made clear his intolerance for nonsense without him uttering a word. Across the aisle from them was D.A. Richard Roman with his dark eyes and shark’s smile, both of which were currently plastered all over the side of every city bus as he ran for re-election. He hadn’t bothered with scent blockers, presumably to rattle Lily and her client, but Turner was the one who scowled as the bailiff read the case file and ordered everyone to rise. It wasn’t difficult to comply when Dean and Lily hadn’t sat down yet, and he glanced over the top of her head at their opposition as Roman smoothed the jacket of his dove grey suit. The two officers who showed up at his doctor’s office to arrest him were standing behind the man, Britton darting a glare in the omega’s direction. Awful memories of waiting quietly to be called to the stand to testify against Arthur Ketch, Cole Trenton, and Ansem Weems came flooding back to him, and Dean took a moment to swallow down the bile in his throat as Lily again laid a hand on his arm. Roman didn’t look like the kind of guy who even knew how to sweat, while Dean was starting to silently pray his county issued deodorant held up.

“Mr. Smith, welcome to my courtroom,” the judge said, the baritone of his voice cool as ice and as serious as the rest of him. “It is my job to inform you of your constitutional rights before we begin, including the right to trial, the right to counsel, and the right against self-incrimination. I see you’ve already secured counsel. Ms. Sunder, you’ve been retained by the defendant?”

“I have, your honor,” Lily replied as Turner looked over the papers in front of him.

“Mr. Smith stands accused of violating his prior terms of release and resisting arrest,” Turner said, his brow furrowing at something in the file. His mouth moved as he silently read to himself for a few moments, then he looked up at the D.A. with a frown. “Mr. Roman, could you explain these charges to me? It says the defendant was arrested at his doctor’s office.”

“That’s correct, your honor,” Roman said smoothly. “The terms of the defendant’s release required him to wear a monitoring collar that only allowed…”

“I can see how restrictive the collar was to his movements,” Turner snapped. “I asked about him being arrested at his doctor’s office.”

“Your honor, if I may?” Lily asked, ignoring the D.A.’s scowl. Turner ignored it too and nodded. “As you can see, my client is allowed outside the one mile radius of his home if he has received approval from the District Attorney’s office and a member of his legal team is within one hundred feet of him at all times. When Mr. Smith told us on Monday that he had an Om-OB/GYN appointment on Wednesday, we immediately sought and were granted permission for him to attend by the D.A. Our associate, Mr. Wesson, has been assigned to accompany our client anywhere he needs to go, including all appointments, but as an alpha, he was not legally permitted to enter the examination section of the omega clinic where Mr. Smith’s doctor practices.”

“You or Ms. Benchley didn’t think to accompany Mr. Smith instead?”

“We did, your honor, but with the media attention our client has received, we thought it best to have Mr. Wesson take him anyway. This case has drawn national news interest and Mr. Smith’s home has been vandalized twice already with graffiti on his garage and large amounts of dog excrement left on his front lawn. We had Mr. Wesson shuttling Mr. Smith to his appointment for his brawn as much as his brains.”

“Your honor, this is an arraignment hearing,” Roman interjected. He did a terrible job of hiding his irritation. “This line of questioning seems highly inappropriate…”

“I’ll decide what’s appropriate to ask in my courtroom, Mr. Roman.” Turner’s umber eyes flashed crimson briefly, just enough to let the younger alpha know he wasn’t interested in being used as part of Roman’s re-election bid. “And I’d advise you not to speak until spoken to, unless you feel like being slapped with a contempt charge this morning.”

Roman looked sufficiently cowed as he said, “My apologies, your honor.”

“Continue, Ms. Sunder,” Turner ordered, though his eyes stayed glued to the D.A. for several more minutes.

“Thank you, your honor. Mr. Wesson drove our client to his appointment, but in accordance with federal law he had to remain in the waiting area while Mr. Smith was seen by his Om-OB/GYN. As a result, Mr. Smith exceeded the one hundred foot limit of the tracking collar. However, at no time did our associate leave the clinic or attempt to shirk his duties as Mr. Smith’s court appointed chaperone. He was merely waiting for Mr. Smith so he could bring him to our offices for a meeting afterward about his case.”

“Considering Mr. Wesson’s arrest is the next up on the docket and he’s charged with obstructing an officer in the performance of his duties, I think it would be wise if I heard the rest from him directly and saved us all a lot of time.”

“Your honor!”

“Mr. Roman, you have been in my court on many occasions. Have you _ever_ known me to threaten a lawyer with contempt and not follow through?” Dean heard Tara choke back a laugh behind him and turn it quickly into a cough before the judge’s piercing glare shifted from the D.A. to her, but Lily remained carefully neutral. “Mr. Wesson, please come forward.” Sam obeyed, shuffling up to stand next to Dean, his normally expressive face a stony mask of professionalism. “Would you please explain to me how you ended up being arrested for obstruction and, according to the filing papers, twice subdued through the use of a stun gun?”

“Happily, your honor,” Sam said, squaring his shoulders the best he could with his wrists still chained to his ankles. “Mr. Smith and I arrived for his appointment approximately ten minutes early so he could fill out paperwork. After about fifteen minutes he was called into the back. I _was_ concerned about how far away he would be and whether it would set off the alert on his collar, but I thought it best not to violate federal law by insisting he allow me to go with him into the exam room.”

“How does the District Attorney’s office track whether you are within the specified distance of your client?”

“There’s a tracking app on Mr. Wesson’s phone,” Roman offered, still clearly unhappy the arraignment had devolved into a proper hearing. “Ms. Benchley and Ms. Sunder have the same app.”

“And you didn’t think to just send your phone in with Mr. Smith?” the judge inquired with a carefully arched brow.

Sam stood dumbfounded for a moment, blinking owlishly at him, before sputtering, “That...uh, that actually never occurred to me, your honor.”

“An ethical defense attorney,” Turner said wryly. “Will wonders never cease. Continue.”

“About half an hour after my client was taken into the back, the two officers sitting behind the District Attorney came in and began to demand the receptionist tell them which room Mr. Smith was in. She refused. I immediately went over to identify myself and confirm that I had personally brought Mr. Smith to the appointment and was waiting for him.”

“What was their response?”

“They said he’d violated his terms of release and they were there to arrest him. I reminded them both that by law they were not allowed in the back of an omega clinic, but they didn’t care. I won’t deny that I grabbed Officer Britton’s arm, but only to stop him from committing a federal offense. At that point, Officer Linus used his stun gun to subdue me. Officer Britton continued to try to get into the back of the clinic, but the staff stopped him, which gave me a chance to pass him and hopefully reach my client.”

“Thereby committing a federal offense himself, your honor,” Roman piped up despite Judge Turner’s withering glare.

“I just wanted to give Mr. Smith a chance to get into his clothes before he got dragged out in handcuffs,” Sam shot back, a low growl vibrating beneath his breastbone. “Based on the way my client was perp walked at his initial arrest, I doubted Officer Britton would extend him the courtesy of letting him put on a pair of pants.”

“Does that sound accurate to you, Mr. Smith?” Turner asked, his laser focus settling on Dean, who had gone slightly grey.

“Yes sir,” the omega replied shakily before clearing his throat. “I mean, yes, your honor.”

“Would you care to elaborate?”

“Uh...I was on the exam table in one of those paper gowns and Sam...Mr. Wesson came in and said there were two cops there to arrest me. Then he threw my clothes at me and told me to get dressed, and then...uh, the two officers came in and threatened to arrest my doctor, and they used the stun gun on Mr. Wesson again and cuffed me.”

“Why did they threaten to arrest your doctor?”

“She was standing between me and them so I had a chance to get my shirt on.”

“And it was the two officers sitting behind Mr. Roman?”

“Yes, sir. Yes.”

Now Turner was glaring at the police, who undoubtedly wished they hadn’t come to the arraignment. Britton was seething, but Linus had turned an awful shade of green. Roman didn’t look much happier.

“You’re the arresting officers?” Judge Turner demanded, and the alphas leapt to their feet.

“Yes, your honor,” Linus spit out before Britton could get a word in.

“Does the defendant’s retelling of what happened sound about right?”

“Uh…” Linus glanced at his partner, who was plainly fit to be tied. “Yes, your honor.”

“I see.” Slowly and deliberately, the judge closed the two manila case files in front of him and set them to the side. Between his scent blockers and emotional restraint, it was impossible to tell what he thought of the case until he looked over at the prosecutor’s table, his nostrils flaring. “Mr. Roman, do you make it a habit of employing people at the D.A.’s office who are unfamiliar with long established federal laws regarding the health care and privacy rights afforded to one of the three designations? Specifically the designation many people would argue is the most vulnerable? Because I, frankly, can think of no other reason that your office would have sent police to arrest Mr. Smith _knowing_ he was at an omega clinic, and that Mr. Wesson would not be able to hold his hand in the exam room. I presume, at least, that your fancy tracking app tells you whose phone is nearest Mr. Smith, and that you would have been able to see at a glance it was Mr. Wesson, who you know to be an alpha?”

The D.A. cleared his throat and admitted reluctantly, “That is correct, your honor.”

“Then help me understand why your office felt it necessary to send two alpha police officers to arrest Mr. Smith in the _middle_ of his appointment, and why they persisted even after Mr. Wesson had identified himself and reminded them of their legal obligation to stay in the front of the clinic,” Turner fumed. “And I would advise you to choose your words carefully, since right now it looks like you’ve wasted an awful lot of taxpayer money and this court’s time pursuing some kind of personal grudge against the defendant.”

“I assure you, your honor, this is not personal,” Roman said, though his cool demeanor wasn’t fixed so neatly in place anymore. “Mr. Smith’s mother lives in Ohio and he has no close ties in Indiana. We were concerned that he would be able to elude Mr. Wesson, who readily admits he did not go with Mr. Smith into the back of the clinic.”

“Your honor, if I may?” Lily snapped, earning a curt nod from Turner. “To say Mr. Smith has no close ties in Indiana is a despicable lie, and the esteemed District Attorney knows it. Mr. Smith’s two and a half year old daughter is in the custody of the PCPS, and if he were to flee the state as Mr. Roman implies was his plan, he would lose any chance of ever having her returned to him. Mr. Roman is well aware of this fact. Furthermore, my client is wearing the tracking collar that caused this mess as a result of a crime with which he has not even been formally charged.”

The judge was quite obviously on the verge of bursting a blood vessel as he whirled on the D.A. to thunder, “Is that _true_ , Mr. Roman?”

“We’re convening a grand jury next week to bring formal charges, your honor,” Roman told him. It was clearly not enough to appease the furious judge.

“You have until Monday to officially charge Mr. Smith with a crime, or I will vacate the conditions of release and order the tracking collar removed,” Turner snarled, the edges of his canines pressing as bright white specks against his lower lip. “I am also dismissing the charges against Mr. Smith _and_ Mr. Wesson and I would _strongly_ recommend the D.A.’s office hold remedial training sessions on the specific and differing rights of alphas, betas, and omegas, as _someone_ working for you clearly needs it. I suggest you get out of my court before I have the two officers behind you brought up on federal charges. Mr. Smith, Mr. Wesson, you are free to go.”

Dean flinched at the sound of the gavel and sucked in a deep breath that immediately left him lightheaded, unaware that he’d stopped breathing at some point during the judge’s tirade. Rage was flooding towards him from the prosecutor’s table as Roman collected his unused notes and snapped them into his briefcase while Britton snarled at Linus and Linus tried to apologize. Lily and Tara were both stroking his arms as the bailiff came over to undo his and Sam’s shackles, while the alpha who had ignored him for days was saying something about him looking pale. Dean nodded, stupidly, as three days of stress slammed into him and the floor tipped under his feet. He managed to pull it together despite the black spots dancing in his vision long enough for all of them to get back to the holding cells where their suits were so they could change, then promptly passed out.


	13. I'm Sorry for Breaking Down in Front of You

By their arraignment, Sam was very used to Dean’s strong, silent type routine, which he understood in the context of them being locked up in a men’s ( _really an alpha’s_ ) prison even if he found it incredibly frustrating. For obvious reasons, Dean couldn’t afford to show any weaknesses or hint at his designation when that would result in having to fight off every alpha within fifty feet, and landing on the guards’ radar for fighting was out of the question. So, Sam played along when really all he wanted to do was ask if Garth had any cuddling positions they could use to help keep Dean calm if they squeezed into the bottom bunk together, and instead flooded their cell with pheromones after lights out. 

As a result, it came as something of a shock when they were all of five feet into the room with the holding cells and their suits and Dean took one last stuttering step before pitching forward on a collision course with the floor. Sam got a hand in the back of his jumpsuit with just enough time to wrench him sideways and slide his other arm around Dean’s waist, but he was still nearly dragged down by Dean’s dead weight, Lily almost going with them both. It was wildly incongruous for the man who’d so adamantly declared he didn’t need a white knight to have fainted in front of him, only as Sam struggled to keep them both upright there was no denying Dean had passed out like he’d worn his corset too tight. 

“Oh my god!” Tara exclaimed as she and Lily helped Sam lay their client down on the floor.

“Tara, go get Ms. Baker,” Lily ordered, ever the unflappable lead attorney. As her partner obeyed, she demanded of Sam, “Did he eat this morning?”

“He hasn’t eaten much since we hit the county jail,” Sam told her, finding Dean’s pulse and trying to count the beats. Given how fast it was pumping, he wasn’t very successful.

“And you just let him starve himself?”

“I didn’t _let_ him do anything. With all due respect, Ms. Sunder, if I’d started ordering him to clean his tray he’d have looked like my bitch, pardon the expression. I doubt that would have helped.”

His boss didn’t have a chance to spit out the scathing retort clearly on the tip of her tongue before Tara was back with Dean’s mother, who ignored all of them in favor of kneeling by her son and stroking her fingers through his hair. She didn’t seem anywhere near as upset as Dean’s legal team, speaking quietly to him like they weren’t even in the room and eventually turning to dig through her purse for something. After only a moment or two, Sam couldn’t take the silence any longer and asked, “Is he okay?”

“He has some health issues,” she said flatly, her mouth turning down sharply as she failed to find what she was looking for and dug deeper into the purse’s contents. “His body produces too much adrenaline, has ever since his first heat and all of...that. He’s been on medication to control it for years now, but obviously, he hasn’t had it the last couple of days. Without it, when he gets even slightly stressed, this happens.”

“He faints?” Tara asked, not embarrassed in the least to have stated the obvious.

“Faints, has insomnia, is too jittery to function, and then there’s the weight loss, palpitations, danger of damage to his heart, high blood pressure...”

“He didn’t tell us any of this,” Lily said, her expression sour as Millie finally found the smelling salts she was hunting for.

“Well, he wouldn’t, would he?” Millie shot back. “You’ve met my son. Do you really think he’d bring this up voluntarily? I’ve been after him to get into therapy for _years_ , and he only started going when Benny and Lisa died because the meds couldn’t handle his symptoms on their own after that.”

“Does he have other medical conditions we need to know about?” Lily demanded, earning a huffed laugh from the older omega.

“Oh sure,” Millie growled. “ _Lots_ of things go wrong with an omega’s biology when they’re unmated and miscarry. We’re not like betas. That’s not supposed to happen to us. If you could all please give us some space? He has a tendency to come out of these episodes swinging.”

“Let me,” Sam said, hastening to kneel beside her as his bosses took several steps back. Millie’s objection was already on her lips when Sam insisted, “I’ve made the mistake of trying to wake him up once before. If he clocks someone I’d rather it was me.”

She regarded him for a moment with narrowed eyes before silently handing over the smelling salts and taking a step back. Sam moved off to Dean’s side, deciding it was probably best not to be hovering over him when their client woke up. His instincts were correct and he gave himself a mental pat on the back for starting to get a handle on Dean Smith, whose fist flew straight into Sam’s shoulder a second after the alpha snapped the paper capsule under his nostrils.

Dean foolishly tried to stand, his movements driven by instinct, and immediately pitched forward again. He landed against something warm, hard, and scratchy, tensing instantly. Through the black spots still clouding his vision, he could see the color orange, then he smelled a scent he’d allowed himself to become alarmingly used to and relaxed into the cage of the arm around his back. He was still far too woozy to feel any sense of shame at turning his face into his lawyer’s neck and taking in several deep lungfuls of his citrusy cedar smell, his eyes fluttering closed as his pulse hammered through his carotid. He expected after the last two days for Sam to pull away, but instead, the alpha stood very still while Dean clutched at the front of his jumpsuit to stay on his feet.

“Easy tiger,” Sam murmured, the hand on Dean’s back starting to slowly sweep up and down his spine from his lumbar region to between his shoulder blades. 

The world was coming much more into focus, and with it came that shame Dean hadn’t been worried about a minute ago. He was starting to remember his heart racing and losing his footing, and that coupled with the lingering odor of smelling salts made it pretty clear what went down in the blank space of time between entering the room and Sam holding him up. His lawyers probably wanted nothing to do with him now that they realized he undoubtedly should have been fitted for a straight jacket years ago. It didn’t help matters any when he heard a woman’s voice he didn’t recognize from the other side of the room.

“Well, Sam, I guess you’re not ready to go yet.”

Great, it was probably the new girlfriend, and judging by how stiff Sam went against him, the alpha had some ‘splainin’ to do. As loopy as he was, Dean failed to stifle a giggle at the thought of Sam with his hair all oiled and his beta in a polka dot house dress stressing over her weekly allowance. The way she’d already tried to meet the family made it clear she recognized Sam for the catch he was; not that _Dean_ thought he was a catch. Sam was just awfully tall and strong and good at keeping his sorry ass upright when his fucking hormones got the better of him.

“Mom, what are you doing in here?” Sam hissed, which was...well, not what Dean expected as the alpha dislodged himself but kept a firm hand on the omega’s arm to stop him from falling over again.

“I planned to drive you home once this was all over,” the woman said, sounding about as irritated as the girlfriend would have been to see Sam with his arms around a strange omega. 

Now that Sam had moved out of the way, Dean had a clear view of Mrs. Wesson and decided it was odd that they looked absolutely nothing alike. She was the blonde woman who’d been sitting in the same row as his own mother, and now he remembered that yes, Lily had said _their_ moms were in the courtroom. She was a few inches taller than Millie, which Dean decided made sense since Sam was a few inches taller than him. She had a long, narrow face and a sloped, narrow nose, though Dean guessed maybe they had the same mouth, not that he’d paid any attention to Sam’s mouth. It hardly seemed important, anyway, given how both of those mouths were scowling.

“I’m with a client,” Sam snapped, then he was gone from Dean’s side when Millie took his place and drew Dean’s attention to her instead. 

“You feeling all right now?” she asked as Sam grabbed his mother’s elbow and vanished into the hall. It was hard to stay focused on Millie when he couldn’t help but wonder why Sam’s mom looked so upset, but he shoved his curiosity away and nodded with difficulty.

“Your mother told us you have some health issues,” Lily said icily on the opposite side of the room. “We said we need to know anything they can use against you.”

“They can’t use any of this against me,” Dean muttered, allowing his mother to help him to a bench in the open holding cell so he could sit.

“We’ll be the judge of that,” Tara told him, and he sighed.

“It’s just hormones,” he said reluctantly, scrubbing a hand down his face like that could possibly hide the blush creeping up his neck. “Omegas aren’t...we don’t, uh...we carry to term. Period. It’s the way we’re built. And when we don’t, our systems can’t process it. It’s not just the shock of however many weeks we’re at when it...happens. It’s the months before we go into heat when everything’s ramping up. Our bodies don’t get the message that it’s all just supposed to stop when there’s...you know, when there isn’t a kid at the end of it all.”

“Does it impact you physically or emotionally?” Tara asked quietly.

“Both. It’s easier if we’ve got a mate, helps with the stress and all the extra hormones. Our next heat is super long and intense, basically we just stay in heat until we catch, but then you get someone like me and it all just goes wrong. I overproduce some hormones, underproduce a couple others, Mom had to pull me out of school because I was either crying all the time or on the verge of beating someone to death. Even with long term suppressants it took about two years for my doctor back home to get the meds right to smooth everything out. The...uh, stuff that regulates my adrenaline and progesterone is starting to damage my liver, though, so that’s why I had the appointment on Wednesday. Dr. Daniels has some new meds she wants me to try, thinks they could work well. I’ve pretty much been her guinea pig since I moved here.”

“I’ve never heard anything about this,” Lily said. She was leaning against the far wall and sounded uncharacteristically rattled.

“They don’t teach this kinda stuff in health class, cuz it’s so rare,” Dean explained. “Everyone learns that ninety-eight percent of omegas who abort end up killing themselves because that’s a real danger, by why scare kids about miscarriage when the odds are about fifteen million to one that it’ll happen to them? There’s not much to learn in medical school either. It’s like that disease where kids age prematurely. You can’t specialize in treating unmated omega rape victims who end up pregnant and miscarry.”

“What if you were mated?”

“It _might_ help, in theory, at least in reducing my stress levels. Having Lizzie helps a lot. She tricks at least part of my screwed up wiring into thinking I’ve succeeded in popping out a kid since…well, since”

“And you didn’t think the D.A. could use this against you?” Lily demanded, stepping forward into the cell and glaring down at her client. “Dean, if the prosecution finds out about this, they can argue that you wanted to get out of your contract with Walter so you could find a mate because your medication is starting to fail. Why would you withhold this information?”

“Because it’s my business, not yours!” Dean growled, recovered enough to stand and loom over her, his shoulders tense despite his mother’s immediate efforts to soothe him. “My health records are private, and they’re going to stay that way!”

“Honey…” Millie started, hoping to head off another fainting spell at the pass.

“No, Mom, Ms. Sunder and Ms. Benchley are going to make _sure_ that my health records don’t end up as part of this trial!” Dean snapped. “I’ve had every inch of my medical history, my body, my fucking _internal damage_ dragged out for newspapers to report on once already. The fact that I’m _still_ a goddamned mess had better never see the light of day. Are we clear?”

All the posturing in the world couldn’t fool Lily or Tara into buying their client’s bluster as anything other than the abject terror it was, and the redhead gripped his hand tightly as his breath came in little shallow puffs and he started to sway.

“We’re clear,” she assured him, watching the high red flush drain from his face as he blinked away the moisture forming in his eyes. “We’ll find every relevant precedent we can to keep this out of court if they somehow manage to dig it up.”

“Don’t tell Sam either,” Dean grit out through clenched teeth, focusing on stopping his hands from shaking since Lily hadn’t yet let him go and had to be aware of it. “People get weird around me when they find out, like they think I’m gonna randomly black out or start sobbing over a bad hair day. Alphas are the worst.” 

“We’ll give him the thousand foot overview but spare all the intimate details,” Tara said, and he finally let his mom guide him back down onto the bench. “Speaking of Sam, I’ll go see what’s keeping him.”

Dean nodded as Lily moved onto the bench to sandwich him between her and Millie, both of them stroking his back and his arms. Tara left them to deal with keeping him conscious since it would take all three of them to keep him from cracking his skull open on the floor if he fainted again. She didn’t like these new revelations that continued to pop up about their client and resolved to pin her partner down into a serious conversation about it later. If Dick Roman and his Keystone Cops managed to dig up even a little bit of dirt on Dean’s health, their whole case could fall apart unless Sam started making real headway with the supernatural angle.

Sam, at the moment, was regretting ever offering to look into the supernatural angle as he tried not to strangle his mother in the hallway of the courthouse. She’d guilt-tripped him about not calling to let her know how his lunch with Samuel went, then she’d guilt-tripped him about not telling anyone to inform her he’d been arrested so she had to find it out from Tara when she called his office when he wasn’t answering his cell, and _now_ she was guilt-tripping him for not wanting to introduce her to his new girlfriend while she was in town visiting. After all, she’d flown all the way up from Kansas City, leaving his father to attend a very important fundraising dinner on his own ( _it was an election year, after all_ ), and if the Lawrence papers learned that the D.A.’s son had been arrested up in Indianapolis? Why, it could spell the end of Steven Wesson’s career!

“And then to walk in on you letting your client _scent you_!” She fanned herself dramatically, allowing a controlled burst of omega distress to drift in his direction. “After he got you _arrested_! What would your girlfriend say?”

“I don’t know what she’d say, Mom, and I never will because I don’t plan on telling her,” Sam hissed, sending the sour notes of alpha irritation right back at her. 

“You...you’re going to _lie_ to her?”

“No, Mom, I’m just not going to tell her! There’s a difference!”

“If your father let some other omega stick her nose into his scent gland, _I’d_ certainly want to know!”

“Well, there’s a big difference between you and Dad and me and Jess, isn’t there? You’re mated, we’re not.”

“So you’re just planning to...what, step out on her with the Escort Murderer?”

“He’s my _client_ , Mom! My very _distressed_ client who just came out of an _alpha_ prison where I spent the last two days making sure no one tried to jump him! If he needs to sniff me for a second or two just to center himself, then I’m not going to push him away!”

His mother gaped at him, absolutely stunned, apparently, to hear that Sam would allow some strange omega into his personal space when she’d spent her whole life teaching him that omegas who gave in to their biology were weak. Sam nearly bit his tongue in half to stop from telling her just how much it would take, aside from Mary breaching attorney-client privilege, to make him rebuff Dean Smith’s attempts to scent him. He’d never been properly scented before, at least not since he presented, when Mary’s gentle nuzzling at bedtime ( _usually the only time she showed any overt affection towards him and Adam_ ) had turned into quick, clinical sniffs during quick, clinical hugs, clearly designed to make sure he was healthy and not upset about anything as opposed to deepening any kind of parental bond. Dean had literally been inhaling Sam’s very essence simply because it made him feel better, safer, and it was far more intimate than anything he’d shared with any of his many beta flings. Betas nosing at him during sex wasn’t the same as what he’d just experienced in the holding room, and Sam was furious at his mother for trying to sully it. 

“Look, what I do or do _not_ do with my client is absolutely none of your business,” Sam continued, his tone so firm and flat it brokered no further discussion. “I will not justify why I was allowing Mr. Smith to scent me, because one, I don’t need to justify _anything_ I do to you, and two, you’re a District Attorney’s wife who walked into a room where a defendant was with his counsel without so much as knocking. You _know_ you can’t do things like that, but you did it anyway, because you heard from one of my bosses that I got arrested thanks to the ‘Escort Murderer’ and you’ve clearly already let HLN make up your mind for you about him. You wanted to size him up for yourself, maybe so you can run back home and tell Dad how I’m just absolutely wasting my time on this case, and now _I’m_ the one who’s going to have to assure my bosses _and_ my client that I have a higher standard of ethics than my mother. Or do you want to get me kicked off this case and maybe disbarred in the state of Indiana so I have to come running home to Kansas and beg Dad for a job prosecuting jaywalkers and people with too many unpaid parking tickets?”

“Samuel Zachary Wesson,” Mary breathed, her lips thinned in rage. “What on earth has gotten into you that you think it’s appropriate to speak to me this way? I came _all the way here_ to support you at this arraignment when I could just as easily have stayed home!”

“My _job_ has gotten into me,” Sam retorted, straightening up to his full height and glaring down at her. “I know that being married to a D.A. for so many years has probably skewed your perception of the criminal justice system slightly, that you probably assume everyone on the opposite side of the courtroom from Dad is one hundred percent guilty, but you don’t know a thing about this case or my client, and you’re not going to learn a thing about this case or my client until after this is wrapped up and we’ve got the charges against him officially dropped. Sometimes people _are_ actually accused of crimes they didn’t commit, as you just witnessed in front of Judge Turner fifteen minutes ago. I know that probably comes as a huge shock to you, but don’t act like I’m doing something wrong or somehow cheating on my girlfriend for offering my _distraught_ client a shoulder to lean on. He’s going through Hell right now and doesn’t need my mother, of all people, showing up to stare at him like he’s some kind of sideshow freak.”

“Sam?”

Tara’s voice from down the hall caught him completely off guard, and he felt his face heating up as he tried not to think about how long she might have been standing there, or how much she could have overheard. His mother was rooted to the floor in front of him, the tightly controlled anger coloring her face a sight he recognized from countless scoldings about sneaking downstairs to steal some of the dessert specially prepared for one of his parents’ dinner parties. He cared much less about angering her now than he did then, and he deliberately turned his back on her rather than giving in to her oncoming temper tantrum.

“Yes, Ms. Benchley?” he asked, relieved that Tara looked more amused than angry about whatever she’d heard echoing down the hall.

“We need to get you and Dean changed and out of here,” she said. “Orange isn’t really your color. Mrs. Wesson, will you be following us back to the office? Maybe taking Sam out to lunch?”

“No, I think I’ll be heading back home, actually,” Mary replied, her voice deceptively pleasant for how enraged Sam knew she was. “My mate has some events to attend this weekend. I just wanted to make sure our Sammy was okay.”

“It’s Sam,” Sam corrected immediately. It wasn’t going to help the situation to piss her off further, but it sure felt good.

“Your father will give you a call sometime before Monday,” Mary told him, ignoring the slight as she tightened the belt on her cashmere overcoat. “I’m sure he’ll want to hear all about your time behind bars. Ms. Benchley, thank you for letting me know about all of this so I could be here.”

“You’re welcome, Mrs. Wesson,” Tara said. “Have a safe trip.”

Mary gave her a curt nod, threw a murderous look at her offspring, and managed just barely not to storm away down the hall. Tara didn’t say anything, merely arching an eyebrow at Sam as he huffed out a sigh and headed her way so he could finally get out of the baggy prison jumpsuit. He already knew he was going to get an earful from his dad, who had never tolerated backtalk from either of his sons, but he didn’t want to think about that until his phone actually rang. At present, the only thing occupying his thoughts were taking a shower without two dozen men sizing up his naked ass, eating something that hadn’t been boiled down to mush, and making sure their client could make it out of the courthouse under his own power. If that meant Dean had to scent him again to keep his courage up, Sam would find some way to live with it.


	14. In Our Family Portrait, We Look Pretty Happy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter's up early bc the rest of my week is packed with real life "stuff."

Jess was just as angry as Mary that Sam hadn’t told anyone at his work to call her and let her know he’d been arrested, which was just fantastic. She made her displeasure clear in the seventeen voice messages she left him between Wednesday morning and when he finally got home Friday night, nearly ruining his appetite as instead of just ordering the Chinese food that had him picking up the phone in the first place, he listened to her voicemails grow increasingly frantic, then increasingly angry. After spending two days in close proximity to someone as magnetic and unattainable as Dean, the last thing the alpha needed was for his new girlfriend to give him reasons to doubt their relationship. Maybe he really _wasn’t_ built for monogamy after all, and he’d let his rut cloud his judgment in moving things forward with her. Of course, if he broke things off now he’d not only look like a gigantic asshole, but his parents would be even more disappointed than they probably already were. Usually, he wouldn’t care what his parents thought, only he hadn’t spoken to his father yet and fully expected to get an earful about the way he’d treated his mother. He wasn’t particularly inclined to make matters worse by telling them the first semi-serious relationship he’d ever had crashed and burned, not when his mom would undoubtedly think it was because he had the hots for his client.

Which was just ridiculous, really, when you got right down to it. Now that he was no longer in the grip of his annual hormone frenzy, he could see that what he felt for Dean Smith was just a natural extension of defending him against an overzealous prosecutor. Obviously Sam had been confused, those big, green doe eyes and all that poorly masked vulnerability under the barbed exterior tugging at hidden places in his hindbrain that never rose to the surface when he was out with a beta. His father had tried in a bumbling way to explain what being an alpha entailed after he presented, but by the time Sam was sixteen he knew _everything_ and only half listened to Steven’s embarrassed efforts to explain the natural protective instincts that would drive him. That’s all this was; his inner wolf getting its wires crossed between all the testosterone flooding his system and the concurrent need to protect his client. So what if he spent the last two days desperately needing to fill their shared cell with soothing pheromones whenever Dean’s stress blew past the scent blockers? It didn’t mean anything, and he _certainly_ shouldn’t consider breaking up with his girlfriend after only a week because she smelled like dish soap instead of peach cobbler.

Ultimately, Sam decided to shoot Jess a text letting her know he was home, and he’d call her Saturday morning after they both got a good night’s rest. He felt only a tiny pang of guilt at reminding her that _he_ was the one who just spent two days in the county jail, but really, he was not in the mood to deal with anything other than food and a shower. She must have taken the hint, texting back that she was sure he was tired after the ‘ordeal’ he went through for his client and she looked forward to talking to him. He told himself he was imagining the dig at Dean, even though he was pretty sure he wasn’t. It didn’t matter anyway, it’s not like Dean needed Sam to defend his honor, and the irritation burning beneath his breastbone was undoubtedly left over from having to keep his head on a swivel for the last forty-eight hours.

His dad called bright and early Saturday morning, and boy did he not disappoint in the lecturing department. He ran the gamut from how difficult Mary’s pregnancy was through her long labor and hours spent up with him when he had croup straight through to Sam’s decision to go all the way to Stanford to college and his subsequent refusal to move closer to home, not to mention that he’d gone into legal defense to their horror and shame. Then to not let them know he’d been arrested and to act so rudely to the woman who bore him when she’d flown all the way to Indianapolis on a moment’s notice to make sure he was all right? Well, Steven Wesson didn’t know what was going on in his son’s head, but he certainly didn’t like it, and he hoped Sam got whatever it was worked out of his system soon. That wasn’t really a hope, of course, so much as a pointed order, and Sam truly wished he’d ordered that Chinese food instead of polishing off a whole six pack on an empty stomach the night before.

After that he wasn’t particularly interested in talking to Jess, at least not until he’d gotten a run in to blow off some steam. It was still chilly out, but he decided to do the zoo loop anyway rather than head to the gym. Maybe he’d look into a treadmill he could stick in the spare bedroom currently housing his home office so he wouldn’t have to see the beta if things between them continued to drift south. It was the coward’s way of dealing with the issue, but one of the main reasons he never got into official relationships was because he hated awkward endings. His father had criticized him on that, too; that he didn’t understand the meaning of loyalty and had one foot out the door on the Wesson clan from the moment he presented; that - according to Mary anyway - Sam was repeating this pattern with the first girl he’d committed to _ever_ , all because of a pretty client. There was just too much to think about to risk running into Jess at the gym when there was a dull throbbing behind his eyes that wasn’t clearing up, so Sam pulled on his winter gear and took to the streets.

He felt considerably better about life when he got home, nearly seven miles under his belt after running the long zoo loop twice. He’d taken his cell with him and been pleasantly surprised when Jess didn’t call, apparently giving him space to decompress from the week. It put him in a much better headspace while considering where he saw things going with them as he showered off the sweat and road salt from his run, and by the time he was toweling off, he’d decided the best path forward was to just be honest with her. He liked her, and wanted things to continue, but he felt like they were moving too fast and it would be better if they took some time to really get to know each other. His work on the case was going to be ramping up as he liaised with the FDH, and after Dean’s adrenaline problem thing on Friday, he’d also been tasked with finding any relevant rulings that would keep the D.A. from submitting health records for their client as evidence at trial. And of course he’d still need to play chauffeur and errand boy whenever Dean needed to go anywhere, so it was better if they slowed down and acclimated to the idea that they might not be seeing each other every day.

But first, Sam had to put in some time looking up murder and manslaughter cases that might match Dean’s. Singer was waiting on that information and probably thought Sam was a flake by this point, so he buckled down with his laptop, a large mug of strong, black coffee, two bananas, and a western omelette. Before long he was lost in the county records system, digging through reports from the last five years to see if there were any other cases that remotely matched Dean’s. There were a handful of Chastity’s Law cases, none of the details lining up, but there’d also been a number of self-defense cases over a span of three years involving betas who’d killed an alpha they were seeing and swore the victims weren’t acting like themselves. All of them ( _female, every one_ ) either pleaded out or were convicted of manslaughter, though the cases never caught the eye of the FDH to open any kind of formal investigation. Sam was grateful Dean’s case had, and though it looked like a bit of a long shot, with Singer’s help they just might be able to prove whatever got into Walter had infected all the dead alphas.

Sam was so engrossed in his reading he nearly had a heart attack when his phone rang around lunchtime and he realized he was starving. He fully expected it would be Jess checking in once he saw it was almost one o’clock and was more than a little confused to see his brother’s name flashing at him. He was pretty sure by now Adam would be rapidly approaching midterms for his spring semester, but then again he didn’t really know what Adam’s class schedule was like so he could be completely wrong. It wasn’t nearly close enough to Sam’s birthday for Adam’s annual phone call, which left the alpha with only one thing to assume as he answered his cell.

“You’re not even old enough to legally drink yet, so I don’t know how you expect me to get you out of a DUI,” he said as he headed to the kitchen to find something quick to make for lunch.

“ _Hey, don’t deflect your guilt onto me just because you never bothered to call unless you needed money once you left for Cali_ ,” came the sarcastic reply, two decades of ingrained sibling rivalry making Sam bristle.

“I called when I didn’t need money,” Sam objected, his stomach rumbling with its demand for food.

“ _No, you didn’t. Remember, I was there_.”

“I called on Mom and Dad’s birthdays…”

“ _And when they needed to pick you up from the airport_.”

“Are you just going to nag like the little bitch you are, Short Round? Cuz I already got an earful today from Dad.”

“ _And_ **_I’ve_ ** _been hearing it since yesterday from Mom, so spare me. You_ **_know_ ** _whenever you screw up, I’m the one that’s got to pick up the slack_.”

“Why are you calling me, Adam?”

“ _What’s going on between you and your client?_ ”

The question pulled Sam up short in the middle of making himself a sizable roast beef sandwich to fend off his growing irritation. For how strained their relationship became after Sam left for college and - granted - acted like he forgot his parents’ phone number, Adam was still better than anyone at pinpointing exactly what was going on with his older brother. They’d been closer as children, with Adam idolizing Sam all the way until he presented as an alpha, at which point Sam no longer had time for a snot-nosed twelve year old and Adam started to panic about the possibility of presenting as an omega. 

It seemed at the time like the worst thing that could happen, and Sam quietly worried about it, too. What on earth would they possibly have in common if they were on the opposite sides of the designation spectrum? Sam would have to stick closer to home, strutting and posturing to make sure whatever alphas came sniffing around his brother were worthy, and even with all the hormones raging through his system, he was not the strutting and posturing type. It never occurred to either of them that Adam presenting as a beta would do even more damage to their weakening bond. By the time Adam turned sixteen, Sam was off at Stanford, and finding out his brother was a beta relieved him of all responsibility to come home, as far as he was concerned. He’d started taking summer classes just so he’d have an excuse to stay in California, and when he _did_ finally cave and fly home for Christmas, the differences between the two of them could not have been more stark. Adam lived in a kind of muted reality compared to the rest of the family, not driven by routine hormone spikes and unable to scent the difference between his father and his brother. Both smelled like nutmeg to Adam’s inferior nose, while his mother smelled faintly of vanilla, just like all omegas. If Sam thought his mother was shocked, and perhaps a little disappointed, when he presented as an alpha, he’d gotten a _real_ glimpse of what disappointment looked like on that last Christmas trip home. Mary might not have been happy with an alpha son, but she had no clue what to do with a beta.

“Why would you ask such a dumb question?” he snapped anyway, hoping to deflect the younger Wesson before Adam sunk his teeth in and wouldn’t let go.

“ _Mom said you were letting him scent you and that you didn’t plan to tell your girlfriend about it_ ,” Adam snapped back. “ _Last I knew you didn’t think omegas were worth your time, and you certainly weren’t walking around letting them shove their noses in your neck._ ”

For some reason the obvious air quotes in Adam’s tone when he said ‘girlfriend’ had Sam seething, and he nearly stabbed himself with the knife as he was cutting his sandwich.

“Well, if _someone_ kept his big fat mouth shut in the first place, Mom wouldn’t even know I was seeing someone, now would she?” Sam hissed, abandoning his sandwich in favor of furiously pacing his kitchen.

“ _Well if_ **_someone_ ** _would call our mother more than twice a year, she wouldn’t be up_ **_my_ ** _ass every fucking week trying to overcompensate for never hearing from her eldest child._ ” Adam had him there, and for several long moments, Sam couldn’t do anything other than growl and fume, until finally the beta said, “ _Seriously, though. What’s going on with you? I know you’re not really into this Jess girl…_ ”

“What makes you think I’m not really into Jess?” Sam sputtered, affronted.

“ _Because the first time you mentioned her you called her ‘this hot chick at my gym that I’ve been banging.’ Plus she’s a beta._ ”

“Oh god, don’t start with all your sociology crap. I don’t know what the hell is in those textbooks, but I am _perfectly_ happy with my no omega rule.”

“ _That’s why you go through betas like Kleenex?_ ”

“For the last time, _what do you want_ , Adam?”

“ _I want to know how long Mom’s going to be leaving me messages about how my older brother is throwing his life away, ruining the first serious relationship he’s ever had, and that I need to talk some sense into him because he won’t listen to her or Dad. I would like to have a life that doesn’t involve being a mediator between you and them. This thing with your client, is he just a damsel in distress fetish you’re working through, or do you actually like him?_ ”

Sam realized as he stood in his kitchen with his unfinished sandwich and squirmed that he didn’t talk to his brother like he used to because Adam always cut straight to the heart of the matter. If he didn’t talk to Adam, then Adam couldn’t point out how shallow Sam was when it came to dating, and Sam wouldn’t have to explain that was because he had a hard time connecting with people. He was good at skimming along the surface when he met someone, and he’d had a couple of close college friends, but since moving to Indianapolis he’d been all about the job and random hook-ups, and he’d been fine with that. He couldn’t help thinking of Dean telling them that he didn’t really have anyone, that most people didn’t stick around once they learned all the cheap pick-up lines in the world weren’t going to get him into their bed. Sam was the opposite, opening his bed to anyone, yet he never made any meaningful connections either. It was a facet of his personality he didn’t like thinking about, and Adam never flinched from shining a light squarely on it.

“I actually like him,” Sam admitted softly after some time.

“ _But you can’t do anything about it because he’s your client_ ,” his brother said, sounding uncharacteristically sympathetic.

“No, I can’t do anything about it because he’s got a really messy history and isn’t interested,” Sam sighed. “Even without the murder thing, there’s nowhere to go besides maybe a shaky friendship and a lot of unrequited pining on my part. It’s pointless to stop seeing Jess over something that would never happen anyway.”

“ _So you’re settling._ ”

“What? No, that’s not what I meant.” That _was_ what he meant, of course, only thankfully his phone beeped with a call from the woman in question and he quickly decided he’d rather get torn a new one by Jess than have Adam psychoanalyze him any longer. “Look, I gotta go. I’ll call Mom and smooth things over so she leaves you alone, okay?”

“ _I’ll believe it when it happens. And Sam? It’s statistically proven that alphas are happier when they’re mated to omegas. Especially highly driven alphas. You know, the kind who are looking to land a junior partnership at a law firm by the time they’re thirty._ ”

“Fuck you, Short Round.”

“ _Betas have feelings too, you know. If you’re not really into Jess, don’t string her along._ ”

“I’m not stringing her along, I’m just...trying to figure things out.” That the statement about betas having feelings applied to Adam as well wasn’t lost on Sam as Jess’ call rang through to voicemail, and he groaned inwardly at the message that was going to inadvertently send to her. “Look, I really do have to go. If Mom calls again, just don’t pick up.”

“ _Because_ **_that’s_ ** _the mature way to handle things._ ”

“ _Goodbye_ , Adam.”

He didn’t wait for his brother to respond, hanging up the phone and punching in Jess’ number before she thought he was avoiding her. Just as he feared, she sounded insecure and annoyed when she picked up, telling him she thought he forgot about her. It only took a little soothing to convince her he’d been on the phone with his brother, and when she mentioned they hadn’t seen each other all week, he was perhaps a bit too quick to invite her over for dinner. He knew she’d get the idea that everything was fine between them when they still needed to have a serious talk, but in his experience, telling a woman they needed to have a serious talk over the phone never ended well. If he didn’t want her to shut right down or key his car, it was better to ease into that face-to-face after a nice meal and maybe a glass of wine.

Of course, the problem was still that whenever he and Jess were together, things tended to devolve rather quickly to the physical aspects of their relationship. Her visit that evening was no different. It was an easy trap to fall into, there were endless jokes about alphas being led around by their dicks for a reason, but Sam really had intended to at least finish cooking the spaghetti before they ended up naked on the kitchen floor. He was lucky he’d started keeping condoms in all of his pockets whenever he planned to see her, and since she only put on his ‘Mr. Good Lookin is Cookin’ chef’s apron afterward, getting his brain back online was a losing battle. Though it was possible she sensed something was up, since she distracted him with long lines of naked flesh every time he tried to actually _talk_ to her. His primitive hindbrain reminded him they could always talk in the morning, only she woke him up with a blowjob, then hopped in his shower and rushed out the door for a Sunday morning shift at the gym. Either Jess suspected all wasn’t sunshine and roses between them, or she was perfectly happy with little more than a physical relationship. 

By the end of the weekend, Sam was too confused to know what was going on between them, deciding at last that he shouldn’t rock the boat. He hadn’t lied to his brother, after all. He really did like Jess and the longer he thought about it, the less sense it made to call things off or slow down to take a breath. That would happen naturally as his workload increased. He _still_ had to call Bobby Singer back, then see if he could make appointments with the incarcerated betas, and there was no telling whether Roman could convene a grand jury in time to formally charge his client by the next day. The omega might get the collar off temporarily, only to be slapped into it at a later date, and as the case ramped up Sam and Jess would either survive as a couple or they wouldn’t. His brother’s accusation that he was _settling_ continued to eat away at him though, an idea that never would have entered his mind before he laid eyes on Dean Smith. While Sam might not think he was old enough to consider matehood and children, he was definitely getting too old to keep having one night stands and weekend flings. Jess may not have been exactly what he wanted, but she was someone he could have. Sam just had to stop thinking about how her eyes were the wrong shade of green and everything would be fine.


End file.
